Holmescroft--opening it to get some air. The sill doesn't come much
above your knees," I said.

"You hear that, Mary? Mary, do you hear What this gentleman says? Won't
you believe that what nearly happened to you must have happened to
poor Aggie that night? For God's sake--for her sake--Mary, won't you
believe?"

There was a long silence while the steam kettle puffed.

"If I could have proof--if I could have proof," said she, and broke into
most horrible tears.

Baxter motioned to me, and I crept away to my room, and lay awake till
morning, thinking more specially of the dumb Thing at Holmescroft which
wished to explain itself. I hated Miss Mary as perfectly as though I had
known her for twenty years, but I felt that, alive or dead, I should not
like her to condemn me.

Yet at mid-day, when I saw Miss Mary in her bathchair, Arthurs behind
and Baxter and Miss Elizabeth on either side, in the park-like grounds
of the Hydro, I found it difficult to arrange my words.

"Now that you know all about it," said Baxter aside, after the first
strangeness of our meeting was over, "it's only fair to tell you that
my poor cousin did not die in Holmescroft at all. She was dead when they
found her under the window in the morning. Just dead."

"Under that laburnum outside the window?" I asked, for I suddenly
remembered the crooked evil thing.

"Exactly. She broke the tree in falling. But no death has ever taken
place in the house, so far as we were concerned. You can make yourself
quite easy on that point. Mr. M'Leod's extra thousand for what you
called the 'clean bill of health' was something toward my cousins'
estate when we sold. It was my duty as their lawyer to get it for
them--at any cost to my own feelings."

I know better than to argue when the English talk about their duty. So I
agreed with my solicitor.

"Their sister's death must have been a great blow to your cousins," I
went on. The bath-chair was behind me.

"Unspeakable," Baxter whispered. "They brooded on it day and night.
No wonder. If their theory of poor Aggie making away with herself was
correct, she was eternally lost!"

"Do you believe that she made away with herself?"

"No, thank God! Never have! And after what happened to Mary last night,
I see perfectly what happened to poor Aggie. She had the family throat
too. By the way, Mary thinks you are a doctor. Otherwise she wouldn't
like your having been in her room."

"Very good. Is she convinced n