"I'm going to send for the coroner," said Mrs. Bowers. "That's the proper thing to do. I must go right away and do it. Dear, dear, who was that murderous man, I'd like to know? I'd have followed after him, and, mayhap, caught him, only I was so flustrated I didn't know what to do first. The mean, murderous villain!"
She bustled out so full of excitement that she forgot to lock her prisoner's door.
Queenie started up full of joyful emotion.
"Now is my chance!" she exclaimed, "Leon Vinton is dead, and Mrs. Bowers has no right to detain me. I will leave this dreadful place at once."
She opened the wardrobe and took out a long waterproof cloak and hood, putting them on with trembling hands.
Then she exchanged her thin shoes for thick walking boots, and doubled a dark-brown barege veil over her face.
Thus equipped she opened the door and ran down the steps to the hall with her heart beating almost to suffocation.
In the doorway she paused. Mrs. Bowers was standing in the path by the side of the dead man, and Queenie was afraid she would attempt to detain her.
"I must make a run for it," she thought, and suiting the action to the word, she flitted down the steps and ran at break-neck speed down the path, past her living and dead persecutors, and sprang through the gate and out into the road.