"Did she go alone?" Markham interrupted his explanation.
"No. A fella called for her."
"Did you know this 'fella'?"
"I'd seen him a couple of times calling on Miss Odell, but I didn't know who he was."
"What did he look like?" Markham's question was uttered with hurried impatience.
Spively's description of the girl's escort tallied with Jessup's description of the man who had accompanied her home, though Spively was more voluble and less precise than Jessup had been. Patently, Miss Odell had gone out at seven and returned at eleven with the same man.
"Now," resumed Markham, putting an added stress on his words, "I want to know who else called on Miss Odell between the time she went out to dinner and ten o'clock when you left the switchboard."
Spively was puzzled by the question, and his thin arched eyebrows lifted and contracted.
"I—don't understand," he stammered. "How could any one call on Miss Odell when she was out?"
"Some one evidently did," said Markham. "And he got into her apartment, and was there when she returned at eleven."
The youth's eyes opened wide, and his lips fell apart.
"My God, sir!" he exclaimed. "So that's how they murdered her!—laid in wait for her! . . ." He stopped abruptly, suddenly realizing his own proximity to the mysterious chain of events that had led up to the crime. "But nobody got into her apart-
