The report from Central Office which Lieutenant Valcour received over the telephone contained one definitely useful piece of information: the person who had used the comb and brushes belonging to Endicott had been a blonde and was either a man or a woman with bobbed hair.

And Mrs. Endicott, Lieutenant Valcour reflected as he hung up the receiver, had blonde shingled hair. And so, except for the shingling, did Hollander.

Roberts, on the other hand, had not.

And where, he wanted to know, was his inspiring confidence in the innocence of Mrs. Endicott now? Precisely where it had been before. His mind began to gibber. What was that curious scent, that trace of an aroma? What about Hollander’s roommate: the young Southerner who preyed upon wealthy women in night clubs? Had Endicott evidence that Hollander was mixed up in similar jobs, and had Hollander come to steal it, or silence Endicott? Rats! And what were Marge Myles’s address and telephone number doing in Mrs. Endicott’s personal directory? And why had Mrs. Endicott been such a stupid liar as to say she had seen no one on the balcony at the time when the shots were fired, when the only apparent place from which the shot that had killed Endicott could have been fired was the balcony?⁠ ⁠… A knock-knock.

“Come in,” he said.

Cassidy opened the door.

“There’s an old dame downstairs, Lieutenant, who insisted on coming in. She wants to see you.”

“Did she say who she was, Cassidy?”

“She did. And you can believe it or not, sir, but her name is Molasses.”

Lieutenant Valcour made a desperate clutch at his scattering reason.

“By all means, Cassidy,” he said, “show Mrs. Molasses right up.”

Madame Velasquez, in the penetrating light of early morning, was beyond words. The intervening hours since Lieutenant Valcour had left her, wigless and talking to herself in her stepdaughter’s apartment, had unquestionably been ones of worry. As she came into the room Lieutenant Valcour motioned to Cassidy to wait outside and close the corridor door.

Over her black sequinned dress she had thrown an evening cape of blue satin edged with marabou, and on her wig rested a picture hat trimmed with plumes. Her eyes ignored the details of Endicott’s room, of Endicott’s body stretched beneath the sheet; ignored everything but Lieutenant Valcour, the man whom she had come to see.

“Marge is dead,” she said.

Her voice still retained the curious qualities that made it suggest a scream.

Lieutenant Valcour wearily closed his eyes. One other murder would truly prove to be the straw with himself in the role of the already overladen camel.

“Sit down, Madame Velasquez,” he said, “and tell me how it happened.”

Madame Velasquez spread billows of blue satin and marabou into an armchair.

“I don’t know how it happened,” she said.

“Did you find her body in the apartment?”

“There ain’t no body.” Madame Velasquez then added, as her brittle little eyes glittered with a strange sort of conviction, “He made away with it.”

“Who did, Madame Velasquez?”

“Herbert Endicott,” she said.

For a startled moment Lieutenant Valcour stared sharply down curious vistas: had Endicott killed Marge Myles, perhaps having called for her just after she had written that note to her mother? He brought himself up shortly. Utter nonsense! Endicott was in this very room at the time when Marge Myles must have been writing that note and was himself in the process of being killed.

“That isn’t possible, Madame Velasquez,” he said quietly. “Endicott was himself attacked right here at about the time your stepdaughter must have been writing that note to you. That was at seven last evening⁠—at the very moment he was to call for her at her apartment⁠—and it must have been a little after seven when she wrote, as she states in the note that he hadn’t come.”

“No matter”⁠—her beringed fingers fluttered extravagantly⁠—“I feel certain he did it, and I want him punished and caught.”

“But Mr. Endicott is dead, Madame Velasquez.”

“That’s what you say,” she said.

Was he really, Lieutenant Valcour wondered, going mad? There seemed such terribly disturbing possibilities of fact in every absurd aspect on the case the woman facing him opened up. Who, after all, had identified Endicott? His wife, and that only by implication; his friend Hollander, again by implication; Roberts had seen the dead man’s face, but she, in common with all the world, was mad; Dr. Worth⁠—what proof was there that Dr. Worth was Dr. Worth, or that the telephone number given him by Mrs. Endicott had been Dr. Worth’s? It could all have been arranged by some clever mob.⁠ ⁠…

“This is folly,” he said abruptly, really more to convince himself than the nutlike face peering at him from the armchair. What he needed was sleep⁠—just a couple of hours of good sleep. “Madame Velasquez, that body on the bed is Herbert Endicott. Now tell me as lucidly as you can, please, just why you say that Marge is dead.”

Her little eyes began to glitter with rage. “I believe she has killed herself to spite me.” The knotted paste jewels on her thin fingers quivered indignantly. “She did it to make me suffer,” she added, “to stint me.”

“Just so she wouldn’t have to give you any more money,” he suggested.

Madame Velasquez began to weep noisily. “What’ll I do, Lieutenant⁠—oh, what will I do?”

He continued to regard her through lazy eyes.

“Can’t you find somebody else to take her place?” he said. “Somebody else to blackmail?”

“I ain’t young. It’s too late.”

“Tut, tut, Madame Velasquez.”

“No, I ain’t. And unless it’s a case like Marge’s was, such rackets take looks.”

“But surely such an intelligent and charming woman as you, Madame Velasquez”⁠—he unearthed a trowel and laid it on pretty thick⁠—“a woman of the world, surely you can think up other cases where the evidence or proof can be faked. You know very well that you never had any real or visible proof that Marge killed her husband in that canoe disaster, now, don’t you?”

“I did, too, Lieutenant.”

“Nonsense. If you really did, you’d have it with you and would show it to me.”

She nibbled the bait slyly and refused it.

“I wouldn’t, and I haven’t. And,” she said, “I want proof of that trollop’s death. I’ll get it if I have to drag the river myself.”

Madame Velasquez jumped up and ran nervously to the door.

“Then you saw her drown herself, Madame Velasquez?”

“I saw nothing, but I know⁠—I know⁠—what must have been⁠ ⁠…”

She was out in the corridor and running for the stairs⁠—a velvet virago in blue. Lieutenant Valcour ran out after her, and saw that Cassidy was blocking her way.

“Ring up the wagon, Cassidy, and have her booked as a material witness.”

Madame Velasquez began to screech. “Don’t touch me. Keep your dirty hands off me.”

“Take her downstairs, Cassidy. After you’ve arranged for the wagon leave her with O’Brian. Then go up to the housekeeper’s room and ask Mrs. Siddons if she’ll come down. I’ll see her in Endicott’s room.”

“Yes, sir.”

Lieutenant Valcour slowly retraced his steps. When he was again in Endicott’s room and the door shut, he felt a strong recurrence of that annoying sense of some hovering danger. He even shivered a little as if at some draught of cold air and glanced hastily at the windows.

But both were closed.