“‘One word and I shoot!’ he probably cried.  “Get up!’

“Trembling, she must have done so.  ‘Your slippers and a kimono,’ he would naturally have ordered.  She put them on mechanically.  Then he must have ordered her to go out of the door and down the stairs.  Clutching Hand must have followed and as he did so he would have cautiously put out the lights.”

We were following, spell-bound, Kennedy’s graphic reconstruction of what must have happened.  Evidently he had struck close to the truth.  Elaine’s eyes were closed.  Gently Kennedy led her along.  “Now, Miss Dodge,” he encouraged, “try—­try hard to recollect just what it was that happened last night—­everything.”

As Kennedy paused after his quick recital, she seemed to tremble all over.  Slowly she began to speak.  We stood awestruck.  Kennedy had been right!

The girl was now living over again those minutes that had been forgotten—­blotted out by the drug.

And it was all real to her, too,—­terribly real.  She was speaking, plainly in terror.

“I see a man—­oh, such a figure—­with a mask.  He holds a gun in my face—­he threatens me.  I put on my kimono and slippers, as he tells me.  I am in a daze.  I know what I am doing—­and I don’t know.  I go out with him, downstairs, into the library.”

Elaine shuddered again at the recollection.  “Ugh!  The room is dark, the room where he killed my father.  Moonlight outside streams in.  This masked man and I come in.  He switches on the lights.

“‘Go to the safe,’ he says, and I do it, the new safe, you know.  ‘Do you know the combination?’ he asks me.  ‘Yes,’ I reply, too frightened to say no.

“‘Open it then,’ he says, waving that awful revolver closer.  I do so.  Hastily he rummages through it, throwing papers here and there.  But he seems not to find what he is after and turns away, swearing fearfully.

“‘Hang it!’ he cries to me.  ’Where else did your father keep papers?’ I point in desperation at the desk.  He takes one last look at the safe, shoves all the papers he has strewn on the floor back again and slams the safe shut.

“‘Now, come on!’ he says, indicating with the gun that he wants me to follow him away from the safe.  At the desk he repeats the search.  But he finds nothing.  Almost I think he is about to kill me.  ‘Where else did your father keep papers?’ he hisses fiercely, still threatening me with the gun.

“I am too frightened to speak.  But at last I am able to say, ’I—­I don’t know!’ Again he threatens me.  ‘As God is my judge,’ I cry, ‘I don’t know.’  It is fearful.  Will he shoot me?

“Thank heaven!  At last he believes me.  But such a look of foiled fury I have never seen on any human face before.

“‘Sit down!’ he growls, adding, ‘at the desk.’  I do.

“‘Take some of your notepaper—­the best.’  I do that, too.

“‘And a pen,’ he goes on.  My fingers can hardly hold it.