Free The Cases of Susan Dare by Mignon G. Eberhart Page A

pillows. I—I saw the whole thing, you know. Saw Jessica approach her and talk, heard the reply—and how was I to know it was Jessica speaking and not Marie? Then Jessica bent and did something to her cushions, pulled them away, I suppose, so the body was no longer erect. And she turned at once and was between me and Marie all the way to the door so I could not see Marie, then, at all. (I couldn’t see Marie very well at any time, because she was in the shadow.) And when David and Caroline came upstairs, Jessica warned both of them that Marie was reading. I suppose she knew that they were only too glad to be relieved of the necessity to speak to Marie.” Susan shivered again and smoothed back her hair and felt dreadfully that she might cry. “It’s a t-terrible house,” she said indecisively, and Jim Byrne said hurriedly:
    “She can go now, can’t she? I’ve got a car out here. She doesn’t have to see them again.”
    The air was cold and fresh and the sky very black before dawn, and the pavements glistened.
    They swerved onto the Drive and stopped for a red light, and Jim turned to her as they waited. Through the dusk in the car she could feel his scrutiny.
    “I didn’t expect anything like this,” he said gravely. “Will you forgive me?”
    “Next time,” said Susan in a small clear voice, “I’ll not get scared.”
    “Next time!” said Jim derisively. “There won’t be a next time! I was the one that was scared. I had my finger on the trigger of a revolver all the time you were talking to them. No, indeedy, there won’t be a next time. Not for you, my girl”
    “Oh, all right,” said Susan agreeably.

EASTER DEVIL
    S USAN DARE SIPPED HER coffee and quietly contemplated devils. Outside, rain beat down upon cold, dark streets, but inside the drawn curtains of Susan’s small library it was warm, with a fire cheerful in the grate, and the dog lazy upon the rug, and cigarettes and an old book beside the deepest armchair. An armchair which Susan just then decorated, for she had dressed for her dinner à seul in soft trailing crimson. Too bad, thought Susan regretfully, that her best moments were so often wasted: a seductive crimson gown, and no one to see it. She smashed her cigarette sadly and returned to her book.
    Devils and devil-possessed souls! Of course there were no such things, but it was curious how real the old writers made both. Susan, who was a successful young writer of thrilling mystery novels, was storing up this knowledge for future use.
    Then the doorbell rang. The dog barked and scrambled to his feet and bounced into the hall, and Susan followed.
    Two men, beaten and wet with rain, were waiting, and one of them was Jim Byrne, with a package under his arm.
    “Company?” asked Jim tersely, looking at the dress.
    “No. I was alone—”
    “You remember Lieutenant Mohrn?”
    Of course she did! It was her volunteer work with him on a recent Chicago crime that had led the police force to regard her as a valuable consultant.
    “How do you do?” said Lieutenant Mohrn. “I hope you don’t mind our coming. You see, there’s something—”
    “Something queer,” said Jim. “In point of fact, it’s—”
    “Murder,” said Lieutenant Mohrn.
    “Oh,” said Susan. Her own small warm house—and these two men with sober faces looking at her. She smoothed back her hair. “Oh,” she said again.
    Jim pushed the package toward her.
    “I got size thirty-six,” he said. ‘Is that right?—I mean, that’s what we want you to wear.”
    That was actually Susan’s introduction to the case of the Easter Devil. Fifteen minutes later she was getting out of the glamorous crimson gown and into a brown tweed suit with a warm topcoat, and tossing a few things into a bag—the few things included the contents of the package, which proved to be several nurse’s uniforms, complete with caps, and a small kit of tools which were new and shiny.
    “Do you know anything about nursing?” Jim Byrne