“I was comin’ downstairs in the afternoon a week ago Thursday, and I saw Ellen let in a man.  Good-looking man.  Good dresser.  Seemed about thirty-five till you looked over his hands and the creases around his eyes, when you saw he was risin’ forty-five if a day.  Stranger, I guess, for Ellen kept him waiting in the hall.  He read the papers while he waited, and he didn’t look at nothing but the financial columns.  I took it from that, he was in Wall Street, though you can’t never tell in New York, where they all play the market or the ponies.  I didn’t wait to size him up real careful; that wouldn’t do.  I just passed on down to the pantry and then passed back again.  He was still there.  This time he had put up his newspapers, and he was looking over some pencil notes on that yellow legal cap paper.  He didn’t hear me until I was close on him, the rugs in the hall are that big and soft.  But when I did get close, he jumped like I had caught him in something crooked and made like he was goin’ to hide the sheets.  Of course, I didn’t look at him, but just kept right on upstairs.  When I turned into the second floor, I heard Ellen say, ‘Mrs. Markham will receive you.’  I didn’t pay no attention to that at the time.  It was only one of twenty little things I remembered.  Stayed in the back of my head, waitin’ to tie up with something else.

“Come Tuesday—­week ago to-day and my afternoon off.  I was comin’ home early, about nine o’clock.  I’ve got front door privileges, but I generally use the servants’ entrance just the same.  Right ahead of me, a green automobile with one of those limousine bodies drove up to the front door.  It’s dark down in the area by the servants’ entrance.  I stopped like I was huntin’ through my skirt for my key, and looked.  Out of the automobile come a man.  He turned around to speak to the chauffeur and I got the light on his face. Who do you suppose it was?  Robert H. Norcross!”

“The railroad king?”

Rosalie pursed her lips and nodded wisely.

“How did you know?  You’ve never seen him before.”

“Ain’t it my business to know the faces of everybody?  What do I read the personals in the magazines for?  You’d know Theodore Roosevelt if you saw him first time, wouldn’t you?  But I made surer than that.  Next day I matched the number of his automobile with the automobile register.  That number belongs to Robert H. Norcross.”

Dr. Blake whistled.

“Playing for big game!” he said.

“That was what struck me,” said Rosalie, “and while it wasn’t impossible that this Mr. Norcross might have a straight interest in the spirit world—­well, when you see big medium and big money together, it looks like big fake.  And there was the man with the notes who read the financial pages—­he jumped back into my mind.

“The servants’ entrance comes out through the kitchen onto the second floor.  When I come into the hall, Ellen was waiting for me.  She was tiptoeing and whispering.