25But all that was neither here nor there. It was murder I was concerned with . . . murder, and something else. And even that went out of my mind when I saw Dorothy Hallet. If I’d passed her on a crowded street I don’t think I’d even have recognized her. She was up in her own sitting room, taking some papers out of an old walnut lace chest that stood on a table between two windows. She wasn’t aware of me until I got in the room. She turned quickly, flashing around, her body concealing the open box. The relief that came into her eyes was almost as startling as the change in her. I don’t mean she was haggard in the sense that I’d look haggard if I hadn’t had any sleep and had the load on my mind that she had on hers. I’d look like an old piece of corrugated paper pulled out of a mudhole. She
