Coulee City dispatch. [volume] (Coulee City, Wash.) 19??-19??, 1937-09-23
CHAPTER III-Continued

destroyed it? But how could
Brooke Reyburn have known what
was in the first will? Perhaps your
aunt had told her that she was to be
residuary legatee-it doesn't seem
probable, but women do fool
things" He grinned. "Of course
men never do. We've got to get
busy. If it isn't destroyed, that will
may be at Lookout House; you've
never liked the Jacques and you
say that they hate you. I have an
idea. Open your house. Live there.
Get friendly with the girl
II would feel like a sneak to 60
there to spy on her"
"You suspect that she may have
Influenced your aunt to make a will
in her favor, don't your"
II do"
"Then give her chance to prove
that she didn't. Take a couple of
Japs and 60 down and live next
door,"
II won't commit myself to that
proposition in hurry. If I decide
to do it, will you come with me?"
Sure, I've been hoping you'd ask
me. Philo Vance is my middle
name" Stewart picked up the note
lying on the desk. you'd better
open the investigation by accept
ing this"
"The Reyburn girls invitation to
dine on Thanksgiving day? l would
feel like spy, traitor. The tur-
key would choke me-"
"Do you want the truth about
this will?"
"You bet I do"
"Then 60. Don't write. We never
send letter when we can send
man. Phone the night before that
you are coming. She'll have less
time in which to think why you are
accepting"
Brooke Reyburn stood in the door
way of the living-room at Lookout
House. Behind her in the hall
graceful circular stairway wound UP
and up. She nodded approval. The
room was the perfect setting she
had visualized for the duchess of
Argyle since the day she had known
that her father had willed her the
portrait. The green of the walls
and trim repeated the color of the
satin gown of the woman in the dull
gold frame which hung above the
mantel of carved black Italian mar
BILE, repeated also the shade of the
feathers of the doing parrot in
gilded cage, threw into relief dark
polished surfaces of mahogany.
She had had everything that she
thought belonged to his family
stored in the apartment over the
garage. Curious that she had found
SO little silver.
She looked at the door which
Mary Amanda Dane had told her
opened into the twin house. Some
thing uncanny about it. Whenever
she was in the room it drew her
eyes like a magnet. Mark Trents
house was on the other side. 1t had
not been lived in for years. What
waste. Had his wife refused to
live there? His wife? She couldn't
think of him as having had a wife.
Why think of him at all?
She resolutely switched her
thoughts to her surroundings. This
was the same room in which she
had first seen Mrs. Dane in her
wheel chair, but how different. Then
it had been drab and heavy; now it
glowed with soft color. She would
never forget the pathos in the won-
ans eyes as they had met hers,
nor the eagerness of her greeting.
She had registered a passionate
vow to make her lovely and attrac-
tive in appropriate clothes. That
had been her job-then-and
thrilling job, too, to help women
make the most of their good points.
How Mary Amanda Dane had
fooled her about money. The Grip
pied woman had kept her feet firmly
on the ground when it came to
spending. Planning inexpensive, at
tractive clothes for her had been an
exciting challenge. She had sue
ceeded. The frocks had been charm
ing, and with her drab wardrobe
the invalid had shed much of her
crabbedness. Lovely clothes did
that for woman. Pity that more
husbands didn't realize the fact.
Now she was gone and had left a
small fortune behind her. Why had
she denied herself so many of the
luxuries of life? Brooke blinked long
wet lashes and said aloud, as she
had said many times since she had
come to live at Lookout House: