Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 36, No. 4, October 20, 1928

“Everything is very quiet here,” he informed them. “And I’m the quietest chap in the house. My party — Miss Edwina Gilchrist — is reading her Bible in the next room. Her niece, Edna Boatwright, has gone to church with the landlady. I don’t know of anything that is to prevent us from having a friendly afternoon together. I’ve ordered dinner to be sent up here for the three of us. Cigars and cigarettes on the table Sunday papers if you want to read. Dominoes and cards if you want to play.”

“What the dickens are we here for?” inquired Grady, tossing his hat onto the bed and seating himself lazily.

Burke glanced at him in surprise and then shrugged.

“If you don’t know,” he replied, “I can’t tell you. My orders are to entertain you two and still keep an eye on the old lady in yonder. I’ve made three peepholes for us through the wall — they’re corked up now, but we can see and hear pretty well what goes on in the next room if we’re close to the wall — five-inch walls they are, too.

“The holes are not as convenient as they might be, but I had to match the dark spots of the wall paper in that sitting room. It took me one whole day to make ’em. I only had half an hour in that room to mark ’em while the old lady was out in the park.”

“I suppose we are to let events guide us,” yawned Grady, lighting a cigarette.

“I suppose,” agreed Burke. “I turned in a full report on my party the day after I was assigned to this case, and the chief said to stay here and carry on until further orders. Don’t look so glum, sergeant. We have good meals here.”

Brill grunted and opened the box of dominoes.

“No use just sitting around,” he commented. “Come on. I’ll play you two plainclothes cops for a penny a point. I might as well pass the time profitably.”

“Bull from a harness bull,” remarked Grady in blunt humor. “Pull up a chair, Burke, and we’ll give this overfed flatfoot the works.”

“Wait’ll l open a window to let out the smoke. And you are both out of character,” rejoined Burke. “While we would have to talk rather loud for our voices even to be heard out of this room, I suggest we carry out our parts — Cousin Bert, and Mister Nichols.”

Presently they were engrossed in a game of the ebony counters. The time slipped away as the play became more deeply interesting. The noon hour came, and the growing confusion and chatter downstairs, the noise of incoming diners, disturbed them not.

Then the odor of cooking smote their nostrils. It was mealtime. The opening and closing of the corridor door to the adjoining room aroused them.

Burke motioned his companions toward the dividing wall, and quickly removed the plugs from his peepholes. A thrillingly melodious voice fell on their ears.

“—lovely, Aunt Edwina. I wish you had felt strong enough to go. Dinner is about ready, dear. Are you hungry?”

Sergeant Brill stiffened all over. His shoes creaked as he glued his ear firmly against his side of the wall. Grady watched him curiously, all the while listening to the conversation.

“I’ll eat a bit, my child,” responded the voice of Miss Gilchrist.

“I’m glad,” went on Edna Boatwright, seating herself before the dressing table to give a few unnecessary touches to her toilet. “I thought we might take the ‘L’ or a taxi down to Jackson Park this afternoon. The outing will do you worlds of good, and it’s a perfectly gorgeous day.”

Sergeant Brill was gurgling in his throat by now. His eyes were popping, and his usually red face was a solid brick color.

“That voice?” he gasped out in a painful whisper. “That voice!”

“Well? What about it?” hissed Grady at him tersely.

“That... that is the voice of the woman who called the station about the Keene murder!” was Brill’s surprising answer. “I’d know it in a million! Who is that in the next room?”

Grady’s big hand closed like a clamp about the excited sergeant’s arm as Burke answered the query.

“That is Edna Boatwright,” the latter said. “The private secretary of Judge Lethrop.”

“Shut up, the pair of you!” hissed Grady savagely. “Shut up, and listen!”

“Why can’t we go? It won’t hurt you a bit,” the young woman was saying in response to an obvious refusal on the part of her aunt.

“He called over the telephone while you were at church,” replied Miss Gilchrist in sharp emphasis.

Edna Boatwright’s hands flew to her lovely auburn hair, not so much to arrange its shimmering coils as to permit her forearms to hide her flushing-face from the eyes of her aunt.

“Who? Mr. Warner?”

Miss Gilchrist almost snorted.

“Certainly not! Since, when did I start speaking of a gentleman as ‘he’?”

“Oh!” the young woman exclaimed, her face hardening as the rosy hue paled. “You mean—”

“Precisely,” snapped the aunt. “Mrs. Yeager called me to the phone. He said to tell you that he would be here to see you this afternoon on a matter of importance.”

“We shan’t be here!” declared the young woman defiantly. “He shan’t spoil our afternoon for us by keeping us in. Besides, I don’t want to see him.”