Half an hour passed, and then Joyce Stannard appeared from the hall above. She wore a boudoir gown and slippers, and her weary eyes betokened a sleepless night. She started with surprise at sight of Alan Ford on the stairs. But he made a motion requesting her to be silent, and taking a bit of paper from his pocket he wrote: "Say no word. Go back to the hall above and remain there, but out of sight of this spot, until I summon you. Overhear all you can, but on no account let yourself be seen." Joyce read the strange message, and going back up the few steps she had descended, she sat on a hall window seat, concealed by a light curtain. Then Alan Ford, with a short, sad sigh, stood up and approached the panelled wall of the staircase. Down the flights the panels of course slanted, but on the landing they were in level row. Placing his lips to the wall itself, Ford said in a clear low whisper, "Will you come out?" From behind the wall he heard an agonised moan. "It would be better," he said, gently. "Do come." Another moment passed, and then, a panel of the wainscot slid open and Beatrice Faulkner stepped forth onto the landing. "You know all?" she said, and her great despairing eyes looked into those of the detective. "Almost all," he returned, and his glance at her was infinitely sad. "You killed Stannard?" "Yes," she said, and swayed as if she would fall to the floor. Ford assisted her to stand and then gently aided her to a seat on the stair where he had sat a moment since. Beatrice sank to the step and Ford closed the panel she had left open. He did not look into the place to which the panel gave entrance, for he knew what it was. It was the space above the Reception Room. He had seen when he entered the house that since the Reception Room and the studio were next each other and yet there was five or six feet difference in the height of their respective ceilings, that space must be a sort of loft or waste room. It showed from none of the sides. Both hall and studio were high ceiled. The staircase well reached to the roof. There was no explanation of the discrepancy but a waste space the size of the Reception Room and about six feet in height. This space, of course, abutted on the studio, the hall, the stairs, and, on the other side, the outer or Terrace wall. In the studio the balcony ran along the wall at about the height of the stair landing on the other side. Ford guessed at once that ingress to that waste space must be had from the studio or the stair landing or both. He now was sure that panels from both opened into it. As he closed the panel, he noted that there was no secret or concealed fastening. Merely an ordinary flush spring catch, inconspicuous but not hidden. Ford turned to the woman on the stairs. He sat down beside her. "Tell me about it," he said, and his voice was so gentle, his face so sad, that Beatrice turned to him as to a friend.