The knob turned easily. He flung open the door. And then his knees nearly gave way, so tremendous was his relief. For there, on the thin mattress of a white-enameled iron bed, lay the woman he so ardently desired to see.
She had apparently been asleep, and the noise he had made had startled her into panicky wakefulness. Instinctively her hand flew to the ruined left side of her face—that hideous expanse of livid flesh, scarred and ridged so that it did not look human....
"What—? Who—?" Lydia Carr gasped, struggling to a sitting position, only to fall back as nausea swept over her.
"You remember me?" Dundee panted. "Dundee of the district attorney's office. I questioned you this afternoon—"
The woman closed the single eye that had escaped the accident which had marred her face so hideously. "I—remember.... I'm sick.... I told you all I know—"
"Lydia, why didn't you tell me that it was your mistress, Mrs. Selim who did—that?" Dundee demanded sternly, pointing to the woman's sightless left eye and ruined cheek.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Lydia Carr, still clothed in the black cotton dress and white apron of her maid's uniform, struggled to a sitting position on the edge of her basement room bed.
"No, no! That's a lie! It was an accident, I tell you—my own fault!... Who dared to say Nita—Miss Nita—did it?"