"My what?"
"Your escape. And it was rather clever."
"I dropped nothing," she protested, with a fine pretense of bewilderment on her face.
"Nor let it roll quietly off a front window-ledge?" I suggested.
"I was near no window—it would be impossible for me to open a window," she protested. Her words in themselves were a confession.
"You seem to know this house pretty well," I remarked.
"I ought to—it's my own," was her quick retort.
"It's your own?" I repeated, amazed at the woman's mendacity.
"It was my own," she corrected.
I peered quickly about the room. It held three doors, one behind the woman, opening into the bathroom, a second opening into the hallway, and a third to the rear, which plainly opened into a clothes-closet. There had been too much of this useless and foolish argument.