The Desert Moon Mystery by Kay Cleaver Strahan

"What I can not understand," she said, "is, that Gaby knew that she might be killed. And yet, so far as anyone knows, she did not do one thing to save herself. If only, only she had confided in me! Surely I could have found some way to help her-to save her."

"You know, dear," I said, "I think that Gaby was not-well, at least not doing any clear thinking, those last few days."

"I know. I thought it was only her disappointment. But now -- Who could be quite sane with such a fear confronting her? Yet-she left all of her things in order; as if, deliberately, she prepared for death. She burned her papers and letters. See -- " Danny pointed to the fireplace.

I crossed the room and looked into it. Papers had recently been burned there. I took the poker and stirred in the fluttering, black bits; but nothing had escaped the flames. I hung the poker back in the rack with shovel and tongs and bellows. It did not catch on its hook. As I bent to fix it, I saw a little white circle, down in the corner of the stand. I stooped and picked it up. It was a tiny round of celluloid, with the letter "Q" printed on it.

"It is one of the caps for her typewriter keys," Danny replied to my question. "She put them on over the keys; softer for her finger tips, or saved her finger nails-something of the sort."

"I wonder why she burned them? " I said.

"Do you think that she did?"

"Well, this one being here on the hearth -- "

"It probably rolled there, sometime, when she was taking them off her machine."

"Why did she take them off, if she always used them?"

"I don't know."

"Shall we," I suggested, "look and see whether the others are where she kept them?"

Danny opened the desk drawer. "They aren't here, at any rate," she said, and came back to me, and reached out her hand for the little cap, and turned it over in her fingers. "It could mean only," she said, "what we knew before. That she expected death. That she tried to leave everything tidy and in order."

"I don't know," I objected. "It seems more than orderly, to have taken these off the machine and burned them. It seems right down queer."

She smiled a little pitying smile at me, and patted my shoulder. "Poor Mary," she said.

"Well," I tried to defend myself, "in all the mystery stories that I ever read it was always some stray, meaningless little thing that solved the mystery in the end. A criminal never was discovered without any clues, was he?"

"I believe," she said, "that you are the only one in the house who hasn't looked at what Gaby had in her bag -- "

She walked to the table by the window. I followed her. I dreaded seeing that bag again; but I was curious about its contents. It was lying limp on the table.

She picked it up, brushed it flickeringly with the tips of her fingers, and blew on it, as if she were trying to blow something off of it. "Everything," she explained, "sticks to the little pointed beads."

I took it from her and looked at it closely; but I could see no speck of ash, no minute particle of tobacco, nor of dust on its pattern of parrots, tree branches, and flowers.