Page:Miss Madelyn Mack Detective.pdf/74

that brought me to an almost involuntary pause lest I break the spell. Madelyn Mack's rose garden beyond was a wreck of shrivelled bushes, but my pang at the memory of its faded glories was softened by the banks of asters and cosmos marshalled before it as though to hide its emptiness. The snake-like coil of a black hose was pouring a playful spray into a circle of scarlet sage at the side of the gravelled path, with the gaunt figure of Andrew Bolton crouching, hatless, near it, trimming a ragged line of grass with a pair of long shears.

With a sigh I turned toward the quaint chalet nestling ahead. I might have been miles from the rumble of the work-a-day world.

I smiled—somewhat cynically, I will confess—as I pulled the old-fashioned knocker. There were few persons yet who knew, as I did, the shadows surrounding the wedding-night vanishing of Norris Endicott. Could Madelyn solve the problem that had already taken rank as the most baffling police case of five years?

The sphinx-like face of Susan Bolton greeted me on the other side of the door. She was dressed for the street in her prim bonnet and black silk gown.

"Miss Madelyn said you would be here, Miss Noraker," she greeted me. "I thought I might meet you on my way to the Missionary Tea."

Crime and a Missionary Tea! I smiled at the