he went along to his cot in the lumber room.
11
Susan Innes turned away from her telephone. 'That was the doctor,' she said.
Her paying guest looked up from his breakfast of ham and eggs.
'There's been more trouble up there.' Her soft mouth was trying to be grim. 'Do you know, I begin to think something must be wrong.'
'How is Miss Brennan?' asked MacDougal Duff.
'Oh, dear, I didn't ask. But then, he didn't say, either. It seems that something went wrong with the furnace last night and filled Innes's room with coal gas, and he was nearly overcome. But Fred—that's the chaufeur, a real nice boy, too—Fred and Alice or both of them found out about it in time. So Innes is all right now. And Alice must be all right, too, or the doctor would have said.'
Duff said, 'I'll go up there with you, please.'
'Oh, yes,' she said. 'Of course, you must Besides, I told Isabel last night that I would bring you.'
'Isabel is the crippled sister?'
'Yes, the youngest one. Oh, I ought to have insisted. But she said Alice was in bed and asleep and it was late. I hated to ask them to wake her.''
'What time was it then?' Duff asked.
'Well, they didn't send your wke up from the station for hours. They're so careless that way. As soon as it came, I called. It must have been eleven o'clock!' Susan's awed tone indicated that eleven o'clock to her was very late indeed. 'I spoke to Isabel. She said AUce was quite aU nght and sound asleep in bed. So, of couree, I. . '
'Don't worry about it,' Duff said, smiling at her. 'You did your duty.'
'Did I?' said Susan. 'I thmk I ought to have waited up to you, or left a note. The wire said, Tlease find Alice Brennan and ask if she needs help.' Well, of course, I had more or less found her, smce I knew who she was, but...'
'Why didn't they telephone the message to you? Do they insist upon delivering telegrams here?'
'It's so stupid,' Susan said. 'They forgot I have a phone. I haven't had it for very long, you see, and people are so used to having to reach me by other means '
From what you tell me,' Duff said, 'it's your son who seems to have had all the trouble.'
Susan looked very grave. 'Yes. Yes, he does. First the big lamp fell off the upstairs hall table and just missed his head. And then they had an accident m the car, and he was injured. And now... It is a lot of bad luck, isn't it?'
'I think I want to talk to Miss Brennan,' Duff said, So, as soon as you're ready . . .'
They walked up the hill together. Duff accommodating his long-legged stride to Susan's short one. They were a strange pair. The little old lady with the rosy face, in her dolman and old-fashioned hat, and the tall lean man whose clothes, in spite of their unstudied style, hung on his frame with a certain grace that marked him for a city guy.
'You will have to tell me more about the Whitlock family.' Duff said. 'So, as soon as you're ready. . .'
'Dear me, 'Susan said, 'the girls are not much younger than I am. Gertrude's fifty-five. And Isabel must be fifty-one herself. They were young women when I married their father. Or, rather, when their father married me. Stephen was never passive about anything.'
'What kind of young women?'
'Oh, very elegant and cultivated. They'd been abroad. They are the only people in this town who have ever been to Europe. Fve been to Chicago. Stephen took me for a honeymoon.'
Duff smiled. 'Cultivated? Educated?'
'Well,' Susan said, 'girls didn't go to college in their day. But they had music lessons, and Gertrude used to paint china. They were . . . Well, if you understood a mining town . . .'
'Tell me,' said Duff.
'Stephen was a rich man. He was like the Lord of the Manor. Don't laugh.'
'No,' said Duff. 'These small towns have industrial dynasties. His three daughters were princesses, eh?'
'Oh, yes,' Susan said. 'Far too high up for the young men around here. There was only the young doctor, and sometimes visiting, royalty from other towns. They were spoiled, I suppose. It 'wasn't their fault'
'Stephen spoiled them?'
'Well being so high and mighty in a little town like this. They weren't very attractive,' Susan said, 'not really. None of them were pretty. I sometimes think if they had had to try . . .'
'For popularity?'
'Well, for attention.'
'Bom to the spotlight, eh? Did you live with them long after your husband died?'
'I didn't live with them at all. I moved away. You see, they didn't want me there. Heavens! Besides, I wouldn't have liked it I wasn't anybody, Mr. Duff. Stephen just took a fancy to me, and I fell in love. Sometimes I think that if I had stopped to think . . .' She sighed.
'The girls were always hostile?'
