“What for?”

“That’s my business. Miss Jan was hurt here last night. I want to know why.”

“Hurt? Not bad, is it?”

“Bad enough. She’ll get over it.”

The cupola, however, revealed nothing at first. It was floored, save for the square opening for the ladder. Such light as there was was admitted by slotted openings on the four sides. Except that in one place the dust of ages seemed to have been disturbed, it appeared empty. Then she saw something; an old pair of chauffeur’s gloves. They had been shoved back into a corner, but she managed to reach them. She showed them to Amos when she climbed down again.

“Are these yours?”

He stared at them. Then he grinned.

“So that’s where they went!” he said.

“You didn’t put them up there?”

“Why would I put them up there?” he demanded truculently. “I lost them two or three months ago. I thought somebody stole them.”

He wanted them back, but Hilda to his fury took them back to the house with her. One part of the mystery, she felt, was solved. But before she left she turned to him.

“I suppose you can account for your own movements last night?”

He took a step toward her, looking ugly.

“So I hurt her, did I?” he said harshly. “Like my own daughter, and I try to kill her! Sure I can account for where I was last night, if that’s any of your business. You don’t have to come out to the stable to find your murderer, Miss Police Nurse. Look in the house.”

Jan was better that morning. Outside of a headache and some bruises she had suffered no ill effects. She even drank a cup of coffee and ate a piece of toast. But she had no idea what had happened to her, except that she thought the ladder had slipped.

She had not gone to bed. She had quarreled with Courtney and she could not sleep. She had decided to go over and see him. She had reached the stable when she heard a sound overhead. She thought it was Amos, and called to tell him that the door to the staircase was open. Amos, however, had not answered, so she had climbed the stairs.

She was not frightened. She had thought for some time that the bats in her grandmother’s room might have come from the cupola.

“There were slits in the shutters,” she said. “Pigeons couldn’t get in, but bats might.”

What she thought she heard, she said, might have been bats flying around. No, she couldn’t describe it. It was just a sound. Not very loud, either. She knew the loft well. She had played there as a child. She didn’t even light a match until she got there.

To her surprise the ladder was in place. She decided to investigate the cupola, and striking a match she climbed it. She was near the top when it gave way under her.

“I felt it going,” she said. “I couldn’t catch anything. I—well, I guess I just fell. I don’t remember.”