“What did they say when you told them I was coming?”

“They didn’t believe me at first.  Then Sis said you were too old—­and you’re not old at all—­and Gerald said—­he said—­” she giggled.

“What did Gerald say?”

“He said, ‘Damned impertinence!’”

“H’m-m!  I wonder just what he meant?”

“Oh! goodness!  It doesn’t matter what Gerald means.  He makes me weary.  He’s simply impossible—­and I can’t see what Sis ever married him for.”

“I suppose she saw more in him than you do.  They must be very happy together.”

“Happy?  Poof!  Happy as two dead sardines in a can.  They can’t get out—­so they might as well be happy.  Besides, he’s away a good deal.”

“He is, eh?  When was his last out-of-town trip?”

Carroll was interested now—­he had steered the conversation back to matters of importance:  “Oh! ’bout four days ago—­you know—­the day dear Roland was killed by that vampire in the taxicab.”

“He was away that night:  all night?”

“Uh-huh!  All night long.  And would you believe that Sis—­who is scared of her shadow at night—­was the one who suggested that I go spend the night with Hazel?  And it’s certainly fortunate she did, because if she hadn’t I wouldn’t have been with Hazel all night and you awful detectives would probably not have believed her story that she was at home in bed, and then you would have arrested her for murdering Roland—­and she’d have gone to jail and been hanged—­or something.  Wouldn’t she?”

“Hardly that bad.  But it was fortunate that you were there.  It made the establishing of the alibi a very simple matter.  And you say your sister—­Mrs. Lawrence—­is nervous at night?”

“Oh! fearfully.  She’s just like all women—­scared of rats, scared of the dark, scared of being alone—­perfectly disgusting, I call it.”

“Quite a few women are that way, though—­”

“I’m not.  I’m scared of snakes and flying bugs and things like that.  But I don’t get scared of the dark—­pff!  Who’s going to hurt you?  That’s what I always say.  I believe in figuring things out, don’t you I read in a book once where—­”

“But maybe you do Mrs. Lawrence an injustice.  Maybe she isn’t as afraid at night as you imagine.”

“She is, too.”

“Yet you say she let you spend the night at Miss Gresham’s house when Mr. Lawrence was out of the city and there wasn’t anybody on the place but the servants—­”

“Worse than that:  the servants don’t even live on the place.  She spent the night here all alone—!”

“Then all I’ll say is that she is a brave woman.  When did Mr. Lawrence get back from Nashville?”

“Oh! not until ten o’clock the following morning.  And believe me, he was all excited when he read about Roland in the papers.  Poor Roland!  If you were only a girl, Mr. Carroll—­you’d know how terrible it is to have a man who’s crazy about you and engaged to your best friend and everything—­go and get himself murdered.  Why, when I read the papers that morning, I couldn’t hardly believe my own eyes.  I just said to myself ’it can’t be!’ I said it over and over again just like that.  Having faith, I think they call it.  I was reading in a book once about having faith—­”