"I presume your basement room has a window looking out upon the back garden?" Dundee persisted.
"Yes, it has, but I didn't waste no time looking out of it," Lydia answered grimly. "I was laying down, with an ice cap against my jaw."
She had seen someone, Dundee told himself. But the truth would be harder to extract from that stern, scar-twisted mouth, than the abscessed tooth had been.
Finally, when her lone eye did not again waver under his steady gaze, he dismissed her, or rather, returned her to Captain Strawn's custody.
"Well, Janet, I hope you're satisfied!" Penny Crain said bitingly, as she dashed unashamed tears from her brown eyes. "If ever a maid was absolutely crazy about her mistress—"
"I'm not satisfied!" Janet Raymond retorted furiously. "She's just the sort that would harbor a grudge for years, and then, all hopped up with dope—"
"Stop it, Janet!" Lois Dunlap commanded with a curtness that set oddly upon her kind, pleasant face.
"Listen here, Dundee," Tracey Miles broke in, almost humbly. "My wife is getting pretty anxious about the kiddies. The nurse quit on us yesterday, and—"
"And my little wife is worrying herself sick over our boy—just three months old," Judge Marshall joined the protest. "I'm all for assisting justice, sir, having served on the bench myself, as you doubtless know, but—"
"I'm all right, really, Hugo," Karen Marshall faltered.