"Here's your maid, Bonnie," Captain Strawn announced lazily, as one of his plainclothesmen appeared in the arch between dining and living room, dragging by the hand a woman who was resisting strangely, her apron pressed to her face.
"You are Lydia?" Dundee asked, his voice kinder than it had been for many minutes. "Oh, it's Lydia Carr, Captain Strawn? Thank you.... Don't be afraid. And I'm sorry about the tooth.... Come along in. I'll not keep you long."
The woman's knees seemed about to fail her, but with a sudden effort she released the detective's grip on her wrist. Very tall she was, very bony in her black cotton dress. Pathetic, too, with her thin, iron-grey hair, and that apron concealing the left half of her face. It was odd, Dundee thought, that it was not the swollen jaw she chose to cover.
Mrs. Dunlap sprang to her feet and hurried across the room.
"Don't mind, Lydia, please. You must not be so sensitive," she said gently, and even more gently pulled down the concealing apron....
"Good God!" Dundee breathed, and Strawn nodded his understanding of the younger man's horror.
For the left half of Lydia Carr's face was drawn and puckered and ridged almost out of human semblance. Even the eye was ruined—a milky ball which the puckered, hairless eyelid could never cover again.
"Poor Lydia is ashamed of her scarred face," Lois Dunlap explained, her arm still about the maid's shoulder. "She isn't quite used to it yet, but none of us mind—"
"You were burned recently, Lydia?" Dundee asked pityingly.
"That's my business!" the woman astounded him by retorting harshly.