“I haven’t seen her. Hilda said she wanted to rest.”

“Damn this dance anyhow. I wish you’d have Bill Sterling look at her.”

Maud, interviewed through Hilda, definitely declined Bill. I was uneasy myself. But there was nothing I could do. I laid out a game of solitaire, and resigned myself to the company of Roger. At nine-thirty, in reply to Roger’s imperious demand, I let him out for a while. At ten he came back, rubbed against me to express his gratitude, and lay down majestically at my feet. And at eleven, gathering up my flowing skirts to go up to bed, I got the first shock of the many which were to follow. Where Roger had touched me there were bloodstains along the front and hem of my dress.

My first thought was that the dog had been hurt, but when I tried to examine him he merely turned playfully on his back and thrust his big legs into the air, regarding the whole performance as a new sort of game. There was blood on him, though, and fresh blood at that. It was on his paws and his muzzle.

I was still bending over him when Reynolds came in to close up for the night. He started to back out, but I called him.

“Come here,” I said. “Look at the blood on this dog.”

“He may have found a chicken somewhere, miss,” said Reynolds. “Or he may have hurt himself,” he added, stooping in his turn. “These cars, the way they go is wicked, miss.”

But Roger had not been hurt. We could find no mark whatever on him. Nor did I believe he had found a chicken. What was only too ghastly apparent was that he had been walking in blood.

That was when I thought of Tony. He always drove like a lunatic, and where the drive from the Cloisters enters the main highway was a bad spot. I suppose I panicked at once, as I had done years ago when our house caught fire, and I was found in my nightgown three blocks away and still running. Anyhow, I ran out of the house and down the drive to the gates. Everything was quiet there, however. There was no crashed car, no crushed Tony. And in the end it was Roger who led me to the playhouse.

He started across the grass and I followed him. To my surprise the door was open and the lights were on. Still following the dog I went in, to find the night watchman Evans lying face down beside the pool, unconscious and bleeding from a wound in the back of his head. And minus his trousers.

Weeks later we could still only surmise what had happened to him. He maintained that he had never seen his assailant, who must have followed him in after he unlocked the door.

“I was just standing there by the pool,” he said. “I don’t know yet why I didn’t go into it.”