"You came into the room?"
"No, sir, I did not. I stopped in the doorway. I heard Mr. Sprague say she was dead. I was sick and dizzy anyway, and I couldn't move for a minute. I sort of slipped down to the floor, and I guess I must have passed out. And then I was sick to my stomach, and—I didn't seem to care if I never moved again."
"Why, Lydia?" Dundee asked gently.
"Because she was the only friend I had in the world, and I couldn't have loved her better if she'd been my own child," Lydia answered. And the stern voice had broken at last. "I was still there in the back hall when a cop come and asked me a lot of questions, and then that man—" she pointed to Captain Strawn, "—said I could go and lay down. He helped me down the basement stairs."
Dundee tapped his teeth with the long pencil he had kept so busy that evening—tapped them long and thoughtfully. Then:
"Lydia, did you see anyone—anyone at all!—from your basement room window before you answered Mrs. Dunlap's ring?"
CHAPTER NINE
For the first time during the difficult interview Dundee was sure that Lydia Carr was lying. For a fraction of a second her single eye wavered, the lid flickered, then came her harsh, flat denial:
"I didn't see nobody."