Miss Withers Regrets by Stuart Palmer Page A

into the taxi, hesitating before she gave the driver an address. She would have given anything for a talk with Pat Montague in the jail. His version of the fracas with Huntley Cairns in the Sands Point club men’s room might be very interesting. But Pat was in no mood to see her, even if she could get by the barriers outside.
    Or if she could only get into the Cairns house for an hour—that might lead to the uncovering of something. But the inspector had that staked out for himself. She would only be in the way.
    “ ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,’ ” she said.
    The driver turned. “What say, lady?”
    “The hotel, please,” requested Miss Hildegarde Withers wearily.
    She dined alone in the big hotel dining room, wondering, as always, how hotel chefs manage to make everything taste like canned salmon. Then she marched back to her cottage and unlocked the door.
    “Merciful heavens!” cried the schoolteacher. “The room is a shambles!”
    At any rate, shambles or not, it was evident that the place had been hastily but thoroughly searched in her absence. Cushions were askew on the davenport and on the chairs, the tacks along the edge of the carpet were all pulled out, and books had been taken out of their shelves and put back upside down, which made Miss Withers dizzy to look at. Even the cover of the aquarium had been removed and replaced so that it did not quite fit.
    In the bedroom there were fewer signs of disturbance, and none at all in the kitchenette and bath. Nothing whatever seemed to be missing. Miss Withers sat down on the bed, frowning intently. What in the world could any one have imagined they would find here?
    There was no sign that the lock had been forced, and the screens and windows were all in place, unmarred. “This lock will have to be replaced at once,” Miss Withers decided, “or I shan’t sleep a wink tonight, not a wink.”
    She picked up the phone and gave crisp and definite instructions to the man at the desk. He was very dubious about the possibility of getting a locksmith at this hour and on a Sunday, too, but she gave him what was usually referred to as a piece of her mind and hung up.
    Miss Withers came into the living room, knelt down while she straightened the books, and then on an impulse she returned to the phone. “Get me the local police station,” she insisted.
    The night clerk, evidently a very uneasy and suspicious type, tried to find out why she wanted the police. “Never you mind, young man!” she snapped. “Just get the police. I want to talk to Inspector Oscar Piper. I’m going to report that my cottage was broken into this afternoon and turned topsy-turvy—”
    “Yes, I know,” sounded a quiet voice behind her. She whirled, to see the inspector himself standing in the front doorway.
    “Oscar!” she cried. “I was just trying to get hold of you! I don’t understand. Has this vandalism already been reported?”
    He came into the room, looking slightly sheepish. “Well, I know all about it,” the inspector said slowly. “You see, Hildegarde, I ordered it done.”
    She stared at him balefully. “Do I understand you to say—”
    “I sent Sergeant Fischer over here,” Piper confessed as he sank uninvited into her most comfortable chair. “Relax, and I’ll tell you about it. You see, we were hunting for Huntley Cairns’s wristwatch.”
    She blinked. “Well, why hunt for it here—was the light better or something? I assure you that I haven’t set up as a fence.”
    “The watch was missing,” said Piper wearily. “It’s one of those jobs set in solid crystal that tell the hour and the day and the year. His wife gave it to him when they were married, and we had to make sure that young Montague hadn’t taken it off the body and then secreted it here when he knew he was going to be arrested.”
    “But you didn’t find it, did you?”
    The inspector looked at her, a shy leprechaunish smile lighting his face. “Oh, sure we found it.