Page:Miss Madelyn Mack Detective.pdf/75

incongruity as I protested, "But I never told her I was coming! How in the world—"

Susan threw up her mittened hands. "Law, child, don't you know she has a way of finding out things?"

A sudden laugh and the friendly bark of a dog sounded from the end of the hall. A slight figure in black stepped toward me with her two hands extended. At her heels, Peter the Great trotted lazily.

"I am glad you came before six!" she said, as she seized and held both of my hands, a distinctively Madelyn Mack habit. "I was afraid you would be delayed. The trolley service to the Van Sutton place is abominable!"

"But why did you want me before six?" I cried. "And how did you know I was coming at all? And how—"

Madelyn released my hands with a smile. "Really, you must give me time to catch my breath! Come into the den with Peter the Great, and toast yourself while we cross-examine each other."

It was not until she was drawn up before the crackling log in the great open fireplace, with the dog curled contentedly on the jaguar skin at her feet, that she spoke again, and then it was in the rapid-fire fashion that showed me she was "hot on a winding trail," as she would express it.