"No," said Athalie with a faint smile, "it isn't much to ask."
And so the agreement was concluded; Mrs. Meehan brought in fresh linen for bed and bathroom, pulled out the new bureau drawers and dusted them, carried away a few anæmic geraniums in pots, and swept the new hardwood floor with a dry mop, explaining that the entire apartment had been renovated and
redecorated since the tragic episode of last August, and that all the furniture was brand new.
"Her trunks and clothes and all like that was took by the police," explained Mrs. Meehan, "but she left some rubbish behind a sliding panel which they didn't find. I found it and I put it on the top shelf in the closet—"
She dragged a chair thither, mounted it, and presently came trotting back to the front room, carrying in both arms a bulky box of green morocco and a large paper parcel bursting with odds and ends of tinsel and silk. These she dumped on the centre table, saying: "She had a cabinet-maker fix up a cupboard in the baseboard, and that's where she kept gimcracks. The police done me damage enough without my showin' them her hidin' place and the things she kept there. Here—I'll show it to you! It's full of keys and electric wires and switches—"
She took Athalie by the arm and drew her over to the west side of the room.
"You can't see nothing there, can you?" she demanded, pointing at the high wainscoting of dull wood polished by age.
Athalie confessed she could not.
"Look!"
Mrs. Meehan passed her bony hand along the panels until her work-worn forefinger rested on a polished knot in the richly grained wood. Then she pushed; and the entire square of panels swung outward, lowering like a drawbridge, and presently rested flat on the floor.