“I’ve seen her wear it a hundred times.”

“Well, she’ll never wear it again.”  And then, seeing me stare, he added:  “It’s ruined with the water.  Throw it out.  And, by the way, I’m sorry, but I set fire to one of the pillow-slips—­dropped asleep, and my cigarette did the rest.  Just put it on the bill.”

He pointed to the bed.  One of the pillows had no slip, and the ticking cover had a scorch or two on it.  I went over and looked at it.

“The pillow will have to be paid for, too, Mr. Ladley,” I said.  “And there’s a sign nailed on the door that forbids smoking in bed.  If you are going to set fire to things, I shall have to charge extra.”

“Really!” he jeered, looking at me with his cold fishy eyes.  “Is there any sign on the door saying that boarders are charged extra for seven feet of filthy river in the bedrooms?”

I was never a match for him, and I make it a principle never to bandy words with my boarders.  I took the pillow and the slipper and went out.  The telephone was ringing on the stair landing.  It was the theater, asking for Miss Brice.

“She has gone away,” I said.

“What do you mean?  Moved away?”

“Gone for a few days’ vacation,” I replied.  “She isn’t playing this week, is she?”

“Wait a moment,” said the voice.  There was a hum of conversation from the other end, and then another man came to the telephone.

“Can you find out where Miss Brice has gone?”

“I’ll see.”

I went to Ladley’s door and knocked.  Mr. Ladley answered from just beyond.

“The theater is asking where Mrs. Ladley is.”

“Tell them I don’t know,” he snarled, and shut the door.  I took his message to the telephone.

Whoever it was swore and hung up the receiver.

All the morning I was uneasy—­I hardly knew why.  Peter felt it as I did.  There was no sound from the Ladleys’ room, and the house was quiet, except for the lapping water on the stairs and the police patrol going back and forth.

At eleven o’clock a boy in the neighborhood, paddling on a raft, fell into the water and was drowned.  I watched the police boat go past, carrying his little cold body, and after that I was good for nothing.  I went and sat with Peter on the stairs.  The dog’s conduct had been strange all morning.  He had sat just above the water, looking at it and whimpering.  Perhaps he was expecting another kitten or—­

It is hard to say how ideas first enter one’s mind.  But the notion that Mr. Ladley had killed his wife and thrown her body into the water came to me as I sat there.  All at once I seemed to see it all:  the quarreling the day before, the night trip in the boat, the water-soaked slipper, his haggard face that morning—­even the way the spaniel sat and stared at the flood.

Terry brought the boat back at half past eleven, towing it behind another.

“Well,” I said, from the stairs, “I hope you’ve had a pleasant morning.”