“Have you had anything to eat lately?” she asked in a kindly voice.

He looked down at his cap.  “Not since this morning,” he admitted as Billy answered the bell.

Miss Cornelia turned to the impassive Japanese.  “Billy, give this man something to eat and then show him where he is to sleep.”

She hesitated.  The gardener’s house was some distance from the main building, and with the night and the approaching storm she felt her own courage weakening.  Into the bargain, whether this stranger had lied about his gardening or not, she was curiously attracted to him.

“I think,” she said slowly, “that I’ll have you sleep in the house here, at least for tonight.  Tomorrow we can—­the housemaid’s room, Billy,” she told the butler.  And before their departure she held out a candle and a box of matches.

“Better take these with you, Brooks,” she said.  “The local light company crawls under its bed every time there is a thunderstorm.  Good night, Brooks.”

“Good night, ma’am,” said the young man smiling.  Following Billy to the door, he paused.  “You’re being mighty good to me,” he said diffidently, smiled again, and disappeared after Billy.

As the door closed behind them, Miss Cornelia found herself smiling too.  “That’s a pleasant young fellow—­no matter what he is,” she said to herself decidedly, and not even Lizzie’s feverish “Haven’t you any sense taking strange men into the house?  How do you know he isn’t the Bat?” could draw a reply from her.

Again the thunder rolled as she straightened the papers and magazines on the table and Lizzie gingerly took up the ouija-board to replace it on the bookcase with the prayer book firmly on top of it.  And this time, with the roll of the thunder, the lights in the living-room blinked uncertainly for an instant before they recovered their normal brilliance.

“There go the lights!” grumbled Lizzie, her fingers still touching the prayer book, as if for protection.  Miss Cornelia did not answer her directly.

“We’ll put the detective in the blue room when he comes,” she said.  “You’d better go up and see if it’s all ready.”

Lizzie started to obey, going toward the alcove to ascend to the second floor by the alcove stairs.  But Miss Cornelia stopped her.

“Lizzie—­you know that stair rail’s just been varnished.  Miss Dale got a stain on her sleeve there this afternoon—­and Lizzie—­”

“Yes’m?”

“No one is to know that he is a detective.  Not even Billy.”  Miss Cornelia was very firm.

“Well, what’ll I say he is?”

“It’s nobody’s business.”

“A detective,” moaned Lizzie, opening the hall door to go by the main staircase.  “Tiptoeing around with his eye to all the keyholes.  A body won’t be safe in the bathtub.”  She shut the door with a little slap and disappeared.  Miss Cornelia sat down—­she had many things to think over—­“if I ever get time really to think of anything again,” she thought, because with gardeners coming who aren’t gardeners—­and Lizzie hearing yells in the grounds and—­