few minutes; at any rate, I
did one of those unaccountable things for which people who have mental
lapses are noted. It was after bedtime, long after, when the message
arrived, and struck all my thoughts into a bewildering sort of chaos. I
remember hanging up the receiver and turning to the door, but from that
moment there is a blank until I found myself standing before the
dressing mirror in my own room, not in the act of disrobing, as I ought
properly to have been doing at that hour and in that place, but dressing
myself as if for dinner! I think you are aware of the fact that I use
black cosmetic on my moustache, Mr. Cleek? When that mental lapse passed
and I came to myself, there I was with my hair freshly combed and in the
very act of applying the cosmetic to my moustache. I don't know how I
got into the room or when--everything is a blank to me.

"A not unusual thing under the circumstances, General. These sudden
shocks produce effects of that sort frequently. You were not really
accountable, not really aware of what you did, or why--that, I suppose,
is the explanation of how, when you came to think of going to the
cottage and facing the man, you ran out of the house with the stick of
cosmetic still in your hand. You did, did you not?"

"Yes, although I was not aware of it until I arrived at the place."

"Hum-m-m! So I imagined. And the A-string? How did you come to take
that?"

"The A-string, Mr. Cleek?"

"Yes, the bit of catgut. Shall I be out in my reckoning, General, if I
say that as you crept out of the house something fell either on your
head or your hands, something which proved to be a long thick piece of
catgut, and that, without realizing what you were doing, or why, you
carried that, too, with you?"

"Good heavens, how do you know these things? Nobody, nobody on God's
earth could have told you that, Mr. Cleek, for no living soul was there.
But that is exactly what did happen. When I got into the cottage and
found Lady Clavering----"

"With a pink gauze petticoat under a pale green satin dress?"

"Yes. When I got there and found her in conversation with that wretch,
why, those two things--the cosmetic and the catgut--were still in my
hand. I had no use for them, of course, and as soon as I realized that I
was holding them I threw them aside."

"So I supposed," said Cleek. "And the assassin found them there,
although he _might_ have had one of the articles upon his person; not
likely, but he _m