Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 62, No. 2, October 3, 1931

“No. Do you know who I think it is?” Maida bent close. “I think it is Louise Lee!”

“In the attic? Are you crazy?” Tom looked at the pretty, determined young face with searching eyes.

“No. I feel sure she is up there, and maybe her little dog with her.” Maida shivered slightly. “I have imagined that Hallston, the butler, knows; he takes food there. But I’m not able to catch him. He is pretty clever.”

“You mean to say this girl is held a prisoner in the house?” asked Tom sternly.

“Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know. The house is strange,” whispered Maida.

“And so are you,” said Tom involuntarily. “Have you ever worked as a maid anywhere else?”

“No— I—” Maida caught herself and gave Tom a demurely reproachful glance. “For goodness’ sake, don’t talk about me! Will you come to the attic with me now? I cannot bear to think of her, if it is Miss Lee, up there in this heat, alone, with nobody knows what horror for company!”

“You would not go to Miss Malliett or Mr. Malliett with your fear?” asked Tom.

“To them? No! They are capable of anything, those people.” The girl shuddered. “Have you got a gun?”

“Oh, yes,” said Tom, amused. “But why not call to the officer who watches this house?”

“I wanted you to come,” said the girl. “And now you waste time in talking. She may be dying up there! Who knows?”

“And Dorcas Nicolay — where is she?”

“In her room, where she has been ever since the murders,” whispered Maida. “Do you know what I think? I think she is perfectly well, but that she is afraid to be questioned. She is afraid her prince is mixed up in the thing.”

“Good heavens!” gasped Tom, staring at the girl in the dim light of the upper corridor as she hurried him along toward the rear of the house. “Who the devil are you?”

Maida did not reply. Her slim fingers in Tom’s, she led him to a narrow flight of stairs at the back of the second floor hall, up those in silence to another flight just like them in the third floor hall.

“Come,” she said then, looking back with starry eyes from under her mist of hair, “it is at the top of these stairs. My room, you see, is right under the part of the attic where I heard the movements and the steps.”

As Tom followed the silent feet ahead of him, he wondered dully how on earth this girl could throw off the character of parlor maid so expertly and become the delightfully pretty young lady she was at that moment. Maida Malone, with her association with the three prisoners then at city hall, was certainly a mystery. And Tom found her an absorbing one.

At the top of the final flight of steps there was an unpainted door, and against it Tom, at the girl’s bidding, laid his ear. The scuttle of little feet and a low whine reached him. There was a dog inside that room.

A shiver passed through Tom’s weary body. What would they find when they opened that door? Little enough account had been made of the disappearance of the Lee girl.

Without glancing at Maida, Tom tried the door, and it opened noiselessly, admitting him to a long apartment into which the pale light of dawn was creeping through two wide open windows, and in the center of which a small young woman, holding in her arms a Pekingese dog, stood upright, staring at him out of large, defiant eyes.

“Miss Lee — it is you!” cried Maida, hurrying past Tom and seizing the arm of the girl. “How you have worried everybody! I heard some one moving up here and I was afraid.”

Tom, in amazement was staring at Louise Lee. Wearing a loose silken bedroom robe, the girl was a charming picture, her light ringlets a mass of gold over her small head.

The little dog, cuddled in her arms, growled deep in its throat.

The room was furnished sparsely with old furniture which looked as though it had been discarded long since from the lower section of the mansion. A tray with sandwiches and a thermos bottle stood on a table beside a couch on which dainty bed coverings had been thrown back.

“Miss Lee, I’m a detective from the Darbyville police department,” said Tom. “You probably know about the death of Mr. Nicolay and Mrs. Cleet at Darbyville.”

“Yes,” said Louise Lee through stiff lips. “Why have you come here to drag me out where people can question me?”

“Did Hallston know you were here?” asked Maida eagerly as she drew the girl to a seat on the couch.

“Yes.” Louise nodded dully. “He has always been my friend. I had to have a friend after... after that happened.”

“But why did you hide away up here?” asked Tom.

“I hid from the rest of them,” said Louise. “From Dorcas and Ann and Edgar and the prince. They are a fine lot, all of them. I had no chance after Paul went. I hid here for Walter Cleet’s sake.”

“Walter Cleet!” Tom glanced at Maida and met only her brilliant, knowing gaze in reply.

“Yes.” Louise sank back wearily on the couch. “Walter and I are in love with each other. We have been for over a year. If I had not held him back he would have divorced Enid long ago, Enid with her sordid affair with that jazz leader out at the Walnut Club! Walter had no alibi for last night. He left that Wiltham house out in the country and came back here to see me. We were together until terribly late, until almost morning, riding about in his car — it was so very warm. And when he brought me back here and Hallston let me in, sneaked me in as he often did, he told me about the murders. The police had just called the house. I knew the woman was Enid Cleet, for Paul had taken her with him the night before.”