She rose abruptly from her chair, as though a passive position of any kind had suddenly become intolerable.

“Why tell you what my father and I were to each other!” she cried out in a low, passionate voice.  “It seemed as though everything that meant anything had gone out of my life.  I became worn out, nervous; and though the days were bad enough, the nights were a source of dread.  I began to suffer from insomnia—­I could not sleep.  This was even before my supposed uncle came.  I used to read for hours and hours in my room after I had gone to bed.  But”—­she flung out her hand with an impatient gesture—­“there is no need to dwell on that.  One night, about a week after that man had arrived, and a little over a month after father had died, I was in my room and had finished a book I was reading.  I remember that it was well after midnight.  I had not the slightest inclination to sleep.  I picked up another book—­and after that another.  There were plenty in my room; but, irrationally, of course, none pleased me.  I decided to go down to the library—­not that I think I really expected to find anything that I actually wanted, but more because it was an impulse, and furnished me for the moment with some definite objective, something to do.  I got up, slipped on a dressing gown, and went downstairs.  The lights were all out.  I was just on the point of switching on those in the reception hall, when suddenly it seemed as though I had not strength to lift my hand, and I remember that for an instant I grew terribly cold with dread and fear.  From the room on my right a voice had reached me.  The door was closed, but the voice was raised in an outburst of profanity.  I—­I could hear every word.

“‘If she’s out of the way, there’s no come-back,’ the voice snarled.  ’I won’t listen to anything else!  Do you hear!  Why, you fool, what are you trying to do—­hand me one!  Turn everything into cash, and divvy, and beat it—­eh?  And I’m the goat, and I get caught and get twenty years for stealing trust funds—­and the rest of you get the coin!’ He swore terribly again.  ’Who’s taken the risk in this for the last five years!  There’ll be no smart Aleck lawyer tricks—­there’ll be no halfway measures!  And who are you to dictate!  She goes out—­that’s safe—­I inherit as next of kin, with no one to dispute it, and that’s all there is to it!’

“I stood there and could not move.  It was the voice of the man I knew as my uncle!  My heart seemed to have stopped beating.  I tried to tell myself that I was dreaming, that it was too horrible, too incredible to be real; that they could not really mean to—­to murder me.  And then I recognised Hilton Travers’ voice.

“‘I am not dictating, and you are not serious, of course,’ he said, with what seemed an uneasy laugh.  ’I am only warning you that you are forgetting to take the real Henry LaSalle into account.  He is bound to hear of this eventually, and then—­’

“Another voice broke in—­one I did not recognise.