“Perhaps, after all, he’s telling the truth,” she said thoughtfully.  “Her fur coat isn’t in the closet, is it?”

It was gone.  It is strange that, all day, I had never thought of looking over her clothes and seeing what was missing.  I hadn’t known all she had, of course, but I had seen her all winter in her fur coat and admired it.  It was a striped fur, brown and gray, and very unusual.  But with the coat missing, and a dress and hat gone, it began to look as if I had been making a fool of myself, and stirring up a tempest in a teacup.  Miss Hope was as puzzled as I was.

“Anyhow, if he didn’t kill her,” she said, “it isn’t because he did not want to.  Only last week she had hysterics in my dressing-room, and said he had threatened to poison her.  It was all Mr. Bronson, the business manager, and I could do to quiet her.”

She looked at her watch, and exclaimed that she was late, and would have to hurry.  I saw her down to her boat.  The river had been falling rapidly for the last hour or two, and I heard the boat scrape as it went over the door-sill.  I did not know whether to be glad that the water was going down and I could live like a Christian again, or to be sorry, for fear of what we might find in the mud that was always left.

Peter was lying where I had put him, on a folded blanket laid in a clothes-basket.  I went back to him, and sat down beside the basket.

“Peter!” I said.  “Poor old Peter!  Who did this to you?  Who hurt you?” He looked at me and whined, as if he wanted to tell me, if only he could.

“Was it Mr. Ladley?” I asked, and the poor thing cowered close to his bed and shivered.  I wondered if it had been he, and, if it had, why he had come back.  Perhaps he had remembered the towel.  Perhaps he would come again and spend the night there.  I was like Peter:  I cowered and shivered at the very thought.

At nine o’clock I heard a boat at the door.  It had stuck there, and its occupant was scolding furiously at the boatman.  Soon after I heard splashing, and I knew that whoever it was was wading back to the stairs through the foot and a half or so of water still in the hall.  I ran back to my room and locked myself in, and then stood, armed with the stove-lid-lifter, in case it should be Ladley and he should break the door in.

The steps came up the stairs, and Peter barked furiously.  It seemed to me that this was to be my end, killed like a rat in a trap and thrown out the window, to float, like my kitchen chair, into Mollie Maguire’s kitchen, or to be found lying in the ooze of the yard after the river had gone down.

The steps hesitated at the top of the stairs, and turned back along the hall.  Peter redoubled his noise; he never barked for Mr. Reynolds or the Ladleys.  I stood still, hardly able to breathe.  The door was thin, and the lock loose:  one good blow, and—­

The door-knob turned, and I screamed.  I recall that the light turned black, and that is all I do remember, until I came to, a half-hour later, and saw Mr. Holcombe stooping over me.  The door, with the lock broken, was standing open.  I tried to move, and then I saw that my feet were propped up on the edge of Peter’s basket.