'Yes. Just wait,' Duff said indulgently
When Fred appeared it was with respectful attention a servant thoroughly in his place, and MacDougal Duff went gently to work to put him out of it.
'Susan Innes recommends you,' he said, when they were alone in the sitting room, having left Killeen to his coohng coffee. 'So I thought, as long as the house is asleep, I'd like to talk to you.'
'You're a friend of Mrs. Innes?' Fred asked, a little more ready to relax.
'I'm her paying guest, that's all,' Duff said. 'I happen to know Killeen. I also know Miss AHce Brennan.'
'I see,' said Fred, who didn't.
'They were both students of mine, m the same class, now that I remember. I used to teach, you see '
Fred looked enlightened. 'That wasn't in Chicago?'
'No. In New York.'
Fred nodded.
'I don't teach histoy anymore. I'm a detective. Anyhow, I have investigated various murder cases with some success. Yesterday morning at the railroad station, I saw Miss Brennan on the platform. She seemed to want to speak to me. That's why I'm here. I came to find out what it was she wanted to say.'
'Does she know you're a detective now?'
'I don't know. What do you think?'
'She probably does,' Fred said.
'Yes,' Duff said, 'I think so. Mrs. Innes has told me the sequence of events.'
'Some sequence. Since last night, I'm pretty sure.'
'Sure?'
'Sure that somebody's trying to do in my boss,' Fred said. 'What can a detective do in a case hke that? Is trying to kill him a crime, even if they don't succeed?'
'Certainly,' said Duff, 'but a very difficult one to prove.'
'Yeah,' said Fred, 'I dunno how you'd prove it.'
'As I've been able to gather from Mrs. Innes, the things that have happened might have been accidents.'
'Not what happened last night That's why I'm pretty
sure now.'
'Could we go down cellar?' asked Duff softly.
Fred grinned. 'Why not? Tve been down there. I'd like to show you.'
'It's so awkward to explain to your hostesses that you think they're up to a litde murder and therefore you would like to see the cellar.'
Fred grinned wider. 'They're asleep, aren't they?'
He led Duff through the kitchen, where Josephine looked around at them without protest, and down the cellar stairs. It was a shallow, old-fashioned cellar, with stone walls that hadn't been whitewashed for a long time. Duff had to duck constantly, for the roof was crisscrossed with a large number of fat pipes, branching out of the big furnace like the tentacles of a deformed octopus. There was a coal fire. Fred looked in at it briefly.
'The fire was almost smodiered with fresh coal last night,' he said, 'and closed up tight Gas just pouring off.'
'Who tends the furnace?'
'Mr. Johnson. The handyman around here.'
'Ah, yes. Mr. Johnson.' Duff lingered over the name. 'Does he drink?'
'I don't know,' said Fred, 'but that's not the point
Look. Every one of these pipes has a damper. Well, Innes got the full dose. The other rooms were like ice. Because somebody had carefully gone around down here and turned all the dampers shut but one. That wasn't any accident'
Duff pursed his lips in a soundless whistle. He wandered among the pipes. 'Which one goes to the room where Innes is?'
'This one.'
'How do you know?'
'They've got labels scratched on them. See. 'Papa's room.''
'Oh, yes.'
'You'd never know otherwise,' Fred said. 'Gee, it's some contraption.' He stood, feet apart, gazing contemptuously at ihs, heating plant.
'It more or less heats a house,' Duff said mildly. 'You are of the new era. Too bad we can't get fingerprints. But I suppose not.'
'Mine,' Fred said. 'Believe me, I had some fun scrambling around here trying to find all those cocks to turn.'
