CHAPTER XII.
TO "DOUBLE" FOR MURIEL GAY While she breakfasted unsatisfactorily upon soda crackers and a bottle of olives which happened to have been left over from a previous luncheon, Jean meditated deeply upon the proper beginning of a book.
The memory of last night came to her vividly, and she smiled while she fished with a pair of scissors for an olive.

She would start the book off weirdly with mysterious sounds in an empty room.

That, she argued, should fix firmly the interest of the reader right at the start.
By the time she had fished the olive from the bottle, however, her thoughts swung from the artistic to the material aspect of those mysterious footsteps.

What had the man wanted or expected to find?
She set down the olive bottle impulsively and went out and around to the kitchen door and opened it.

In spite of herself, she shuddered as she went in, and she walked close to the wall until she was well past the brown stain on the floor.