Well, as I said before, she put us all out, and shut the door, and asked us not to whisper outside.  Then, too, she refused to allow any flowers in the room, although Betty had got a florist out of bed to order some.

The consultant came, stayed an hour, and left.  Aunt Selina, who proved herself a trump in that trying time, waylaid him in the hall, and he said it might be a fractured skull, although it was possibly only concussion.

The men spent most of the morning together in the den, with the door shut.  Now and then one of them would tiptoe upstairs, ask the nurse how her patient was doing, and creak down again.  Just before noon they all went to the roof and examined again the place where he had been found.  I know, for I was in the upper hall outside the studio.  I stayed there almost all day, and after a while the nurse let me bring her things as she needed them.  I don’t know why mother didn’t let me study nursing—­I always wanted to do it.  And I felt helpless and childish now, when there were things to be done.

Max came down from the roof alone, and I cornered him in the upper hall.

“I’m going crazy, Max,” I said.  “Nobody will tell me anything, and I can’t stand it.  How was he hurt?  Who hurt him?”

Max looked at me quite a long time.

“I’m darned if I understand you, Kit,” he said gravely.  “You said you disliked Harbison.”

“So I do—­I did,” I supplemented.  “But whether I like him or not has nothing to do with it.  He has been injured—­perhaps murdered”—­I choked a little.  “Which—­which of you did it?”

Max took my hand and held it, looking down at me.

“I wish you could have cared for me like that,” he said gently.  “Dear little girl, we don’t know who hurt him.  I didn’t, if that’s what you mean.  Perhaps a flower pot—­”

I began to cry then, and he drew me to him and let me cry on his arm.  He stood very quietly, patting my head in a brotherly way and behaving very well, save that once he said: 

“Don’t cry too long, Kit; I can stand only a certain amount.”

And just then the nurse opened the door to the studio, and with Max’s arm still around me, I raised my head and looked in.

Mr. Harbison was conscious.  His eyes were open, and he was staring at us both as we stood framed by the doorway.

He lay back at once and closed his eyes, and the nurse shut the door.  There was no use, even if I had been allowed in, in trying to explain to him.  To attempt such a thing would have been to presume that he was interested in an explanation.  I thought bitterly to myself as I brought the nurse cracked ice and struggled to make beef tea in the kitchen, that lives had been wrecked on less.

Dal was allowed ten minutes in the sick room during the afternoon, and he came out looking puzzled and excited.  He refused to tell us what he had learned, however, and the rest of the afternoon he and Jim spent in the cellar.