by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood

“ The billiard-room, as has been said, was the last room to the right in the main wing of the house. A single door led to it from the living-room. Miss Cornelia passed through this door, glanced about the billiard room, noting that most of its windows were too high from the ground to greatly encourage a marauder. She locked the only one that seemed to her particularly tempting—the billiard-room window on the terrace side of the house. Then she returned to the living-room and again considered her defenses. ”

“ But there's Dale—and Lizzie. I've got to be fair to them.
For a moment she felt very helpless, very much alone. Then her courage returned.
"Pshaw, Cornelia, if you have got to get help—get the help you want and hang the consequences!" she adjured herself. "You've always hankered to see a first-class detective do his detecting—well, get one—or decide to do the job yourself. I'll bet you could at that."
She tiptoed to the main door of the living-room and closed it cautiously, smiling as she did so. ”

“ Was it possible that Dale, too, had been receiving threatening letters?
I'll be glad when that gardener comes, she thought to herself. He'll make a man in the house at any rate.
When Lizzie at last came in with the lemonade she found her mistress shaking her head.
"Cornelia, Cornelia," she was murmuring to herself, "you should have taken to pistol practice when you were younger—it just shows how children waste their opportunities." ”

“ She compromised. "We have had a domestic upheaval," she said. "The cook and the housemaid have left—if you'd only waited till the next train you could have had the pleasure of their company into town."
"Aunt Cornelia—how exciting! I'm so sorry! Why did they leave?"
"Why do servants ever leave a good place?" asked Miss Cornelia grimly. "Because if they had sense enough to know when they were well off, they wouldn't be servants. Anyhow, they've gone—we'll have to depend on Lizzie and Billy the rest of this week. ”

“ Miss Van Gorder was concerned. "Of course I don't mind but—won't you even have your lemonade?"
"Oh, I'll get some from Lizzie in the pantry before I go up," Dale managed to laugh. "I think I must have a headache after all," she said. "Maybe I'll take an aspirin. Don't worry, darling."
"I shan't. I only wish there were something I could do for you, my dear."
Dale stopped in the alcove doorway. "There's nothing anybody can do for me, really," she said soberly. "At least—oh, I don't know what I'm saying! But don't worry. I'm quite all right. ”

“ They would bombard her with ponderous questions and undoubtedly think she was merely a nervous old spinster. If it was just me, she thought, I swear I wouldn't say a word to anybody—and if the Bat flew in he mightn't find it so easy to fly out again, if I am sixty-five and never shot a burglar in my life! ”

“ Second floor—well, I suppose a man could get into my bedroom from the porch if he were an acrobat—but he'd need to be a very good acrobat and there's no use borrowing trouble. Downstairs is the problem, Cornelia—downstairs is the problem."
"Take this room now." She rose and examined it carefully. "There's the door over there on the right that leads into the billiard room. There's this door over here that leads into the hall. Then there's that other door by the alcove, and all those French windows—whew!" She shook her head. ”

“ Dale had been driving the car. But with an able-bodied man in the gardener's house——
She pulled herself together with a jerk.
"Cornelia Van Gorder, you're going to go crazy before nightfall if you don't take hold of yourself. What you need is lunch and a nap in the afternoon if you can make yourself take it. You'd better look up that revolver of yours, too, that you bought when you thought you were going to take a trip to China. You've never fired it off yet, but you've got to sometime to-day—there's no other way of telling if it will work. ”