“I don’t suppose she would like it,” she said absently, counting stitches.

“Like it! Don’t underestimate our Marian, Miss Adams. She’s a tigress when she’s roused. She’d do anything. What on earth is that noise?”

The slapping had started again. It seemed now to come from Eileen’s room, and while Susie watched her Hilda opened the door cautiously. Eileen was asleep, her face relaxed and quiet, but one of the screens, the one of the window she had opened over the roof of the porte-cochere, was unhooked. It swung out, hesitated, and then came back with a small, sharp bang. The rain was coming in, wetting the curtains, and Hilda, having hooked the screen, closed the window carefully.

Susie had not moved. She was examining her foot.

“What was it?” she inquired.

“A window screen.”

“That’s funny. Marian always keeps them hooked. She’s afraid of burglars. That roof outside—”

She stopped suddenly, as if she had just thought of something.

“What about Eileen? Is she asleep?”

“She’s had a hypodermic. She’s dead to the world.”

“She couldn’t have opened it herself?”

“Not for the last hour or so. Anyhow, why would she?”

But the open screen worried her. She took her flashlight and went back into Eileen’s room. It was as she had left it, Eileen’s suitcase on the floor, the window closed, and Eileen still sleeping. She went to the window and examined the screen. It could have been unhooked from the outside. A knife blade could have done it. But if there had been any marks on the roof beneath, the rain had washed them away. One thing struck her as curious, however. A thin light piece of rope was hanging down from one of the old-fashioned outside shutters. It swayed in the wind and one end of it now and then slapped against the window itself. But although it seemed to serve no useful purpose, it might have been there for years.

She left the window and opened the bathroom door. The bathroom was empty, and so, too, was Marian’s closet, save for the row of garments hanging there. When she went back into the hall Susie was still there.

“Find anything?”

“No. How long has that rope been fastened to the shutter over the porte-cochere?”

“Rope?” said Susie blankly. “What rope?”

Hilda was worried. Useless to tell herself that nobody could have entered Mrs. Fairbanks’s room that night. Useless to recall all the precautions she had taken. Her bland cherubic face was gone now. Instead she looked like an uneasy terrier.

“I’m going in to see Mrs. Fairbanks,” she said. “She can’t do any more than take my head off.”

She opened the door and went in. The room was cool and dark, but outside the wind had veered and the curtains were blowing out into the room. She put down the window and then turned and looked at the bed. She only remembered dimly afterward that Susie was standing in the doorway; that there was a brilliant flash of lightning, and that all at once Susie was pointing at the bed and screaming. Loud piercing shrieks that could be heard all over the house.