Free Yellow Room by Mary Roberts Rinehart Page A

about?”
    “It’s about the yellow room, the room over this. Somebody had been staying there, and taken a bath.”
    His voice sharpened.
    “Didn’t the police look over the house?”
    “I suppose they glanced in. They were looking for her clothes, weren’t they? They wouldn’t notice anything else. They probably thought Lucy Norton slept there. But the bed’s been used, there’s powder on the toilet table, and there are cigarette ashes on the floor. Lucy doesn’t smoke, of course, and she slept in the service wing.”
    “And her clothes?”
    “There were no clothes there when I saw it.”
    There was a longish pause. His pipe was dead, and he did not relight it.
    “They didn’t find her clothes,” he said at last. “I was here, you know. Mason came back empty-handed. But if she slept here she undressed here. The simplest answer is that whoever killed her took her clothes away so she wouldn’t be identified. That and the fire—See here, Miss Spencer, do you still maintain that you have no idea who she was? Or why she was here?”
    She shook her head.
    “No to both,” she said. “So far as I know I’ve never seen her before, or heard of her.”
    “Well, let’s put it another way. Who knew you were coming back, and when?”
    “Quite a lot of people. It was no secret.”
    “Isn’t is possible she was waiting here to see you?”
    “Why on earth would she? There’s a hotel in town. Lots of people rent rooms, too. To come here, with the house cold and empty—”
    “She did come, you see,” he said, still patiently. “She came, or she was brought here after her death. What you say about the yellow room seems to indicate that she came. When she came is another matter. If she slipped in at night after Mrs. Norton had gone to bed it might explain some things.”
    “Explain what?”
    “Explain why Mrs. Norton apparently knew nothing about her being here.” He got up. “Mind if I look at the yellow room? Unless you’ve had it cleaned.”
    “It’s the way I found it. The door’s locked.”
    He nodded his approval, and they went up the stairs together.
    The yellow room was as she had left it. She noticed that he touched nothing when he went in. He inspected the bed, where a spot of lipstick showed on one of the sheets. He bent over and looked at the cigarette ash on the floor. And he stood for some time at the bathroom door.
    “Was this left as it is?” he asked rather sharply. “Soap and towels, and so on, when you left last year?”
    “Soap? I hadn’t noticed. I suppose Lucy puts such things away when she closes the house.”
    “Then this girl seems to have known her way around pretty well,” he said grimly. “Either that, or Mrs. Norton knew she was here. What about these towels? Are they from the servants’ rooms?”
    “They’re guest towels. That’s queer. Lucy must have given them to her.”
    He turned to a window and stood there, looking out. There was still some light, and a breeze was covering the bay with small white-capped waves. Except for a few fishing boats the harbor was empty, and overhead an army plane was making its way to some inland field. He was not thinking of the harbor, however, or even of the war at that moment.
    “Floyd is going to trace her further, if he can,” he said, without turning. “Whether anyone in the town saw her. Whether she made any inquiries to find this place. He’s a small-town policeman, but he’s nobody’s fool.”
    He was still at the window when they heard a car chugging up the hill. He put out the light quickly.
    “Sounds like his car,” he said. “Better get downstairs. And let me do the talking if you can.”
    They were in the library and Dane was filling his pipe when Nora announced the callers. They came in rather portentously, Floyd, Dr. Harrison, the state trooper, and still another man in plain clothes. Floyd was carrying a bundle under his arm.
    The chief introduced the strangers, Lieutenant Wylie and Mr. Campbell.
    “Mr.