“I slipped down as arranged,” went on Celia nervously; “that was easy. I’d gone to my room early, you remember, after saying good-night to you on the plea of headache. I hated hiding it from you, Evie, but John thought it better no one should know. It was about eleven, I should think; all lights were out downstairs and I thought every one was in bed. I opened the window, and he was there, waiting. We talked there a long while, and then he said he couldn’t see me properly or I him, and he came in. I went and turned on the light, and then I heard father as he limped along in the hall. I didn’t know what to do, I was so afraid he had seen the light and was coming straight in. I thought the only thing to do was to go out and pretend I’d only come down for a book or something. I signed to John to stay still and stepped out.” She shivered, and it was a moment before she went on. “I suppose I acted badly,” she said finally; “at any rate, father suspected something; he told me very angrily to give him none of my nonsense, and when I tried to pass it off and to go upstairs he caught me so roughly by the arm that I cried out. And—and that was more than John could stand. He came out and ordered father to leave me alone: he was terribly angry, not in father’s way, but white and stern. He alarmed me, but father, after staring at him as if he could not believe his own eyes, broke out into awful language and then turned on me and told me to go upstairs. I would have disobeyed, even if he had struck me, but John said to me in a little, dry voice, ‘You had better go,’—and so, hating it but not seeing how I could help, I went. That’s all I know; and when father was found like that, I couldn’t help believing John had done it. You can imagine how I have been suffering, and then when mother wanted him to come here it was dreadful.” Evelyn had listened to every word with the deepest attention; she was hearing the truth, she knew. When Celia had finished, she became very thoughtful and finally said, “No, you couldn’t help believing it: I can quite understand. Well, don’t worry any more: I’m going to show he didn’t.” She walked to the window and gazed out; then abruptly turned and disappeared into her room. She had seen Philip Castle strolling along away from the house. CHAPTER XI A Chain of Confusion Without delaying a moment Evelyn took the paper pattern of the footprint she had discovered from her drawer and went along the corridor to Philip’s room. The door was standing ajar; she pushed it open, entered and closed it after her. Now that she had come to the climax of her investigations her mind for all its deadly horror was free of the tortures of uncertainty; intimacy, free and absolute, had been regained between her and Celia, and she had had the joy of taking from Celia the crushing belief in her brother’s guilt.