II
ONE of the Enslee housemaids, who had been flirting with the brindle-haired reporter Hallard, remembered in the midst of the panic that he was to take her that night to a moving-picture theater. He would be loitering in the area now. She ran out bareheaded to explain that she could not keep her engagement. When he asked why, she told him falteringly that there had been a death in the family. She apologized for permitting such an affair to interfere with her promised evening out, but he gasped:
"A death in the Enslee family! Gosh, I've spent so many dismal hours on death-watches that it's great to have you slip me a nice little ready-made death like this. Whose was it? Who died?"
The maid felt that she had a clue now to Mr. Hallard's profession: from his cheerful reception of such news he must be an undertaker. She explained that it was Mrs. Willie Enslee who was dead.
"My God! the young one?" he cried, afire with the news possibilities.
"Yes; she killed herself."
This was almost too good to be true. Hallard grew greedy as a miser.
"Does anybody else know of this? Have any reporters called at the house?"
"Nobody; only the doctor."