Grant looked startled. "Capital punishment, you mean?"
"No! Closed hours."
"Oh, I see. There's a flask in my cupboard. You can help yourself."
"Thank you, sir. Don't take on, miss!" This to the sobbing maid in the background. "Things like that will happen."
"She was a very kind mistress to me," she said. "It hurts me to see her like that."
"Take care of that coat, Williams," Grant said as they went down the path to the car that had been sent for them, glad beyond speech to leave the house behind.
"Tell me, sir, how did you find out it was that woman of all people?"
Grant produced the pages he had torn from the magazine.
"I found that in a magazine in the barbershop at the Marine. You can read it for yourself."
It was an article written by some Midwest sob sister, who had been in New York for a vacation. New York was full of film stars who had either run out on their studies or were on their way back to them, and in New York also was Miss Lydia Keats. And the thing that most impressed the sob sister was not shaking hands with Grace Marvel, but the success of Miss Keats's prophecies. She had made three startling ones. She had prophesied that within three months Lyn Drake would have a serious accident; and everyone knew that Lyn Drake was still on his back. She had said that Millard Robinson would within a month lose a fortune by fire; and everyone knew how the reels of the new million-dollar film had been burned to a cinder. And her third statement prophesied the death by drowning of a woman star of the first magnitude, whose name, of course, she gave, but the sob sister equally of course could not reveal. "If this third prophecy, so circumstantial, so unequivocal, comes true, then Miss Keats is established as the possessor of one of the most uncanny talents in the world. All humanity will be besieging her. But don't go swimming with Miss Keats, little blonde star! The temptation might be too much for her!"