Mrs. Brady relocked the cupboard door, fumbled her keyring over, and unlocked a capacious drawer of the dressing table. She spread a fresh towel on the plate-glass top, in the geometrical centre, and upon the towel she arranged with care a procession of things fished from the drawer. Things for the hair. Things for the complexion. Things for the eyes, the lashes, the brows, the lips, and the finger nails. Things in boxes and things in jars and things in tubes and tins. Also, an ash tray, matches, pins, a tiny sewing kit, a pair of scissors. Last of all, a hand-printed sign, a nudging sort of sign: NOTICE! These articles, placed here for your convenience, are the property of the _maid_. And directly beneath the sign, propping it up against the looking-glass, a china saucer, in which Mrs. Brady now slyly laid decoy money: two quarters and two dimes, in four-leaf-clover formation. Another drawer of the dressing table yielded a bottle of bromo seltzer, a bottle of aromatic spirits of ammonia, a tin of sodium bicarbonate, and a teaspoon. These were lined up on a shelf above the couch. Mrs. Brady was now ready for anything. And (from the grim, thin pucker of her mouth) expecting it. Music came to her ears. Rather, the beat of music, muffled, rhythmic, remote. _Umpa-um, umpa-um, umpa-um-umm_--Mr. “Fiddle” Baer and his band, hard at work on the first foxtrot of the night. It was teasing, foot-tapping music; but the large solemn feet of Mrs. Brady were still. She sat on the couch and opened her newspaper; and for some moments she read uninterruptedly, with special attention to the murders, the divorces, the breaches of promise, the funnies. Then the door swung inward, admitting a blast of Mr. “Fiddle” Baer’s best, a whiff of perfume, and a girl. Mrs. Brady put her paper away. The girl was _petite_ and darkly beautiful; wrapped in fur and mounted on tall jewelled heels. She entered humming the ragtime song the orchestra was playing, and while she stood near the dressing table, stripping off her gloves, she continued to hum it softly to herself: “Oh, I know my baby loves me, I can tell my baby loves me.” Here the dark little girl got the left glove off, and Mrs. Brady glimpsed a platinum wedding ring. “’Cause there ain’t no maybe In my baby’s Eyes.” The right glove came off. The dark little girl sat down in one of the chairs that faced the dressing table. She doffed her wrap, casting it carelessly over the chair back. It had a cloth-of-gold lining, and “Paris” was embroidered in curlicues on the label. Mrs. Brady hovered solicitously near.