Page:Miss Madelyn Mack Detective.pdf/76

"I will answer your questions first," she began, as she rested her chin on her left hand in her favorite attitude and peered across at me, her eyes glowing with the restless energy of her mood. "I telephoned the Bugle office this morning and was told that you had just left for 'The Maples.' Of course I knew that Nora Noraker, the star reporter, would be put on the Van Sutton case at once, and I had a shrewd idea from past experience that you would bring the problem to me before night. As I am to meet Adolph Van Sutton here at six, I was anxious to review the field with you before his arrival. I was retained in the case this afternoon, as I rather expected to be, after I had read the early editions of the papers and saw that the police would have to abandon their obvious theory."

I raised my eyebrows. "What is that?"

She shrugged her shoulders. "Murder! I had not read half a dozen paragraphs before I saw that this, of course, was absurd, and that even the police would have to admit as much before night."

"But they haven't!" I cut in triumphantly. "Detective Wiley gave out an interview just before I left—said there was no doubt that Endicott had been made away with!"

"Then the more fool he!" Madelyn stirred the gnarled log in the fireplace until a shower of yellow