INCIDENT OF THE THREE TROUPERS

“You mustn’t pay any attention to the weeps of our starry-eyed little chum,” one of the trio who followed the Toledo boarding house proprietor, Mrs. Kinsella, up the stairs to the room they had just rented had said. “You see,” continued the speaker, “she’s a hypnotist’s assistant so she’s always out of her mind, and when you add love to that, well…”

“You didn’t know which of the other two women said that?” Professor Fordney asked the landlady.

“No, I don’t,” said Mrs. Kinsella. “The three women, who said they were in show business, gave their names as Daisy Hunt, Clara Walsh, and Wanda Reynor when they asked for a room last night, and I didn’t pay any attention to who was who. One of them—kiddingly it seemed to me—made that remark, but I didn’t look back so I don’t know which one. And I don’t know which one of the three it is I found dead in bed this morning. The other two had vanished.”

On a crumpled program in the dead woman’s suitcase, Fordney found scrawled two pieces of information which, together with the above remark, enabled him to identify the girl who had died from an overdose of Veronal. The scrawled items were to the effect that:

1. Clara Walsh and the hypnotist’s assistant had organized an act of their own for which they hoped to get vaudeville booking which would take them to South America.

2. Daisy Hunt and the dead girl broke into vaudeville as dancers ten years ago, while the frequently hypnotized girl had been in show business only two years.

Who is the dead girl? Turn page for solution.