"Mr. Hartley and I have decided that you are my guest: that it was at my invitation you went to Cleveland with us and that I urged you to continue on the trip until your husband returned from his hunting trip. On your arrival here, you contracted a heavy cold which developed into the grippe; grippe will answer as well as anything else and is not sufficiently serious to call in a physician. Are you familiar with the symptoms of the grippe?" Mrs. F. nodded. "Very well. When you began to grow worse you telegraphed your sister." "But," interjected the sister, "that won't do; that won't hold together because Frank called me up on the telephone a few moments after he returned to Chicago and I told him I didn't know where Fannie was...." I stopped to think.... "Then we'll have to make the telegram reach you immediately _after_ he telephoned and, as he disappeared so abruptly without telling even his office force where he was going, you have an explanation for not being able to reach him.... Now, about the Cleveland week: you didn't know that your sister had gone away because you yourself were out of town. I believe that really was the case, was it not?" "Quite true," replied the sister. "I was spending a few days at Wheaton." "Then so far, it is clear, is it not?... Mr. Hartley will take care of the article which appeared in the Club Window ... and if your husband arrives, I'll try to take care of him.... Now, ... let us think: are there any points we have overlooked?" There was a silence while each of us reviewed the situation. It was Mrs. F. who spoke first. "Suppose--suppose Frank has set detectives on my track and they find out that you've not been to Cleveland! O, I'm sure he'll do it! It's just like Frank! You don't know what a brute he can be. O, it's all very well to say that I am to blame--that I am in the wrong, but if you had lived with Frank for eight years as I have you'd understand some things--and not treat me as if I was a ----" "Stop that!" I felt my eyes snap with the blaze she had kindled. She snivelled and sobbed a bit, then relaxed into sullen silence. "If your husband _has_ employed detectives we'll have to meet the contingency by standing together. In other words we'll perjure ourselves like--perfect ladies. Mr. Hartley says--and being a man he ought to know--that no man would have the courage to tell me I was not telling the truth, even if he thought so." "We'll never get away with it--we'll never get away with it," wailed Mrs. F. It was the sister who spoke next. "And suppose Frank does not show up--suppose he doesn't come at all but waits for the detectives' report and----"