“Do you mean the night after he met his death?”

“Yes.  Some one was upstairs in his room—­in this room.”

Mr. Brimsdown gave a startled glance around him, as though seeking a lurking form in the shadows.  “Here?” he breathed.

“Here, sure enough.  I woke up in my bed downstairs, staring wide awake, as though somebody had touched me on the shoulder.  I was just turning over to go to sleep again, when I heered a noise up here.”

“What sort of a noise?”

“Like the rustling of paper.  I listened for a bit, then it stopped.  I heard a board creak in the next room, where we’d carried him.  Then the rustling started in the other room again, right over my head.  The dog downstairs started to bark.  I got up, and went upstairs as quickly as I could, but there was nobody—­except him.  The dog frightened whoever it was, I suppose.  Next morning I found the front room window wide open.”

“Were there any footprints outside the window?”

“A man doesn’t leave footprints on rocks.”

“What time was it?”

“It would be about midnight, I reckon.”

“Did your wife hear the noise?”

“No.  She was in bed and asleep.”

“Are you sure you didn’t dream this?” Mr. Brimsdown asked, with a shrewd penetrating glance.

“The open window wasn’t a dream,” was the dogged reply.

“You might have left it open yourself.”

“No, I didn’t.  I close the windows every night before dark.”

“And lock them?”

“Not always.”

The incident did not sound convincing to Mr. Brimsdown, but his face did not reveal his scepticism as he thanked Thalassa for the information.  Thalassa lingered, as if he had something still on his mind.  He brought it out abruptly—­

“Has anything been seen of Miss Sisily?”

“Nothing whatever, Thalassa.”

On that he turned away, and went out of the room, leaving the lawyer pondering over his story of a midnight intruder.  Mr. Brimsdown came to the conclusion that it was probably imagination, and so dismissed it from his mind.

He resumed his work of working over the papers, but after a few minutes discontinued his search, and walked restlessly about the room.  The air seemed to have the taint of death in it, and he crossed over to one of the windows and flung it up.

The window looked out on the sea, though far above it, but the slope of the house embraced in the view a portion of the cliffs at the side.  As Mr. Brimsdown stood so, breathing the sea air and looking around him, he espied a woman, closely veiled, walking rapidly across the cliffs in the direction of the house.

She vanished from the range of his vision almost immediately, but a few minutes later he heard footsteps and an opening door.  He was again confronted by the presence of Thalassa on the threshold.  But this time Thalassa did not linger.  “Somebody to see you,” he announced with gruff brevity, and turned away.