“Katherine, you’re a regular Sherlock Holmes,” Peggy protested.
“I believe I could ferret out the criminal,” persisted Katherine. “I’ve thought of a good clue.”
“How would you do it?” Peggy’s voice was little more than a whisper.
“Look on the bottoms of all the freshmen’s shoes for paint,” announced her friend.
“Katherine!”
“Yes?”
“Last year you and I were detectives and we found out things together, which did people good. But do you think—after our partnership then, it is right for you to go—looking things up all by yourself without me, now?”
“How perfectly silly of you,” laughed Katherine; “of course you’d have to help. You could look at the shoes of the girls on one side of the campus, and I’d take our side. Anyway it’s all in fun. I suppose we’d better go around the back way, don’t you think so?”
Peggy thought so, decidedly. In a few moments they were climbing the dark back stairs to the room of the great Monthly editor on the second floor.
The door of Number 11 stood part way open and showed a delightful and luxurious confusion within. Peggy and Katherine got a glimpse of tall red roses, Oriental couch cover, and a profusion of pillows, old bronze bric-a-brac, green leather banners, scattered books and manuscripts, with the inevitable Mona Lisa enigmatically smiling down at it all from the opposite wall of the room.