Page:Miss Madelyn Mack Detective.pdf/89

evening. The dressing table was still strewn with a varied assortment of toilet articles, as though they had just been dropped. The curtain of one window was jerked to the top, while its companion hung decorously to the sill.

Madelyn darted merely a cursory glance at the room. Stepping across to the writing-table, she seized the waste paper basket leaning against its side. It was empty. In spite of this fact, she lifted it to the table and whipped out a small magnifying glass from her hand-bag. For fully five minutes she bent over it, studying the woven straw with as much eagerness as a miner searching for gold dust.

When she straightened, her eyes flashed uncertainly around the walls. Directly opposite was an asbestos grate of gas logs. She sank on to her knees before it, the magnifying glass again to her eyes.

"Is there anything I can do for you, Miss Mack?" Mr. Van Sutton asked impatiently.

She did not even glance in our direction. Rising to her feet, she stepped back to the writing-table where two ash trays were resting. "Were these Mr. Endicott's?"

"I—I suppose so. Why?"

Madelyn carried the trays nearer to the light. One held a litter of ashes; the second tray both