“Someone tried to kill her,” he said. “She fell first. Then she was struck with the flashlight. There is blood on it.”

Marian stared at him from across the bed, her face filled with horror.

“But who would do that to her?” she demanded. “Who would want to kill her?” She leaned over the bed. “Jan. Jan! Who hurt you? What happened to you?”

“I’d let her alone,” he said. “She is coming out of it. The quieter she is the better. She’ll be all right, Mrs. Garrison.”

At midnight Frank Garrison arrived. Carlton, telephoning wildly, had finally located him at his club. He came into the room, his tall figure seeming to fill it, and Marian went pale when she saw him.

“What are you doing here?”

“She is my child, Marian,” he said politely.

“You deserted her. You deserted us both.”

He ignored that. He asked about Jan, and Courtney gave him his place beside the bed. Marian got up, her face a tortured mask.

“You are driving me out of this room. You know that, don’t you? Why don’t you go back to your woman? Jan is nothing to you. Less than nothing.”

“Sit down, Marian,” he said gravely. “This is our girl. We have at least that in common. And be quiet. I think she is coming out of it.”

But Jan, coming out of it, was not much help. After her first wondering gaze around the room she simply said that her head ached, and after that she went to sleep. She was still sleeping when at three in the morning her father left the house, and the doctor sent Hilda to bed.

“She’s all right,” he said. “She’ll have a day or two in bed, but that’s all. You’d better get some sleep. You look as though you need it. I’m staying anyhow.”

She slept for three hours. Then she got up and put on her uniform. In Jan’s room Courtney Brooke was asleep, as was Jan herself, and she went downstairs and let herself out without disturbing anyone.

At the stable Amos had returned. Even before she climbed the stairs she heard him snoring. A dim light from the cupola showed her the loft as they had left it; the ladder lying across the floor, the trunks, the broken furniture. But lying where Jan’s body had fallen was something she had not noticed the night before, a large piece of unbleached muslin some four feet square. She picked it up and examined it. It looked fairly new, and it had certainly not been there when Amos showed her the loft some days before.

She put it down and was stooping over the ladder when Amos appeared. He had pulled a pair of trousers over his nightshirt, and he was in a bad humor.

“What are you doing here?” he asked suspiciously. “If a man works all day and can’t get his proper sleep—”

She cut him short.

“Lift this ladder, Amos. I want to look at the cupola.”