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Lillian, the lush and bedizened Lillian, who came rushing out of the office. She opened her mouth as if she contemplated a good, rousing scream.
    “Don’t!” said Miss Withers sharply. The mouth stayed open. “What were you doing in Virgil Dobie’s office?”
    “Why! I have a perfect right—” Lillian burbled. “I work for Mr Dobie and Mr Stafford.”
    “Do you always work in the dark?” pressed Miss Withers. “What were you after? I judge that you didn’t find it, as your hands are empty.”
    “None of your business!” the girl snapped.
    “I’m afraid it is. Of course, if you’d rather I called Chief Sansom …”
    “Call ahead.” For some reason Lillian was amused.
    “Or the regular police perhaps?”
    Lillian said nothing, but her dark eyes were warier. The schoolteacher took her arm. “Child, this is no time for such goings on. You didn’t kill Saul Stafford. Why try to protect the one who did?”
    “Protect?” the girl gasped. “Do you think I’m crazy? I’m not protecting anybody. I sneaked back here to look for something in Mr Dobie’s desk. Something that I thought would maybe be—I mean—”
    “Come on into my office and tell me all about it,” pressed Miss Withers, trying hard not to sound too much like a police matron on a juvenile delinquency case. Lillian suffered herself to be led inside, took a chair and lighted a cigarette, but there was still considerable resistance in the square of her shoulders and the set of her lower lip.
    “I’m not just being meddlesome,” Miss Withers explained. “But you’ve probably heard by now who I am, and a thing like this is naturally a challenge. If Mr Stafford was murdered right under my nose I want to find out why and by whom. I’m a fine technical expert on murder if I can’t solve one next door. As one woman to another, won’t you help me?”
    Lillian frowned. “Are you really a detective?”
    Miss Withers nodded. “Detectives, like murderers, often look like quite ordinary people. Now what were you looking for in Virgil Dobie’s office?”
    Lillian said, “You’re not interested in the reward, if there is one? You wouldn’t—”
    “I’ll not contest it with you,” said the schoolteacher, amused. “Provided there is one. Sometimes there isn’t, you know.”
    Lillian’s deep eyes shone. “But sometimes there is! And I need the money. With money I can get hairdressers, costumers, voice coaches—maybe a nose operation. I can have screen tests made!”
    “I see,” said Miss Withers. “What was it you hoped to find in Dobie’s office? Was it evidence that he killed Saul Stafford by any chance?”
    That was a shot in the dark and it missed clean. Lillian looked confused. “What? Oh no, nothing like that. But I just remembered something I’d seen when I was filing some of Mr Dobie’s personal papers. I think that both he and Mr Stafford were being blackmailed!” Lillian lowered her voice. “Because when I helped make out their income-tax reports last year I know that Mr Stafford reported over three thousand dollars in bad debts, all loaned to the same person. And the other day, in Mr Dobie’s personal file, I found an I.O.U. for two thousand dollars signed by that same man—and a canceled check for five thousand dollars that had been paid to him!”
    Miss Withers digested that. “Blackmailers don’t give I.O.U.s as a rule. Or accept checks. But it might be a lead. Was that what you were looking for just now?”
    Lillian nodded. “I thought maybe—about the reward, like I told you. But the I.O.U. and the canceled check are gone.” She was looking at the toe of her slipper.
    “And the name of the man?”
    “I don’t remember.” Lillian frowned. “It was Dick—”
    “Come, come—you remember something about it. Was it a long name? Was it Smith or Jones or—?”
    “It was Laval, I think. Something like that. But the stuff was gone, I tell you!” Lillian was breathing hard now and about ready to snap. So