“Oho! Is _that_ the story you’ve trumped up! Clever, my dear, but too thin. Can’t you see, Mr Gibbs, that that is a made-up yarn? She knows Sir Herbert can’t deny it, and no one else can. So she thinks she’s safe!” “Well, she isn’t,” and Kate Holland gave Miss Prall a triumphant glare. “That knife will hang her yet! She not only tried to make up a plausible story about the thing, but she tried to fasten the guilt on me by saying I have surgical skill! Ha, ha,—because I took a nurse’s training,—I’m to be suspected of murder! A fine how-do-you-do! Let me tell you, Miss Prall, you overreached yourself! I’ve been to see Dr Pagett about it, and he says that while the fatal stroke may have been delivered by somebody who knew just where to strike, yet, on the other hand, it might have been the merest ignoramus, who chanced to strike the vital point! So, your ladyship, your scheme to inculpate _me_ falls through!” Gibbs listened eagerly, gathering the news of Dr Pagett’s decision, and learning, too, that this maid of Mrs Everett’s was of a far higher mentality than the average servant. “I scorn to reply,” Miss Prall said, looking over the head of the triumphant Kate. “I do not converse with servants.” “Perhaps it would be well to dismiss both my servant and yours,” drawled Mrs Everett, maliciously. “Let Kate and Eliza both leave the room.” “I’m no servant!” cried Miss Gurney, bristling; “I’m Miss Prall’s companion, quite her equal——” “And think yourself her superior,” interrupted Mrs Everett, with her most annoying chuckle. “Well, Eliza, I look upon you as just as much a servant as my Kate,—more so, indeed, for you can’t hold a candle to Kate for intelligence, education or——” “Or viciousness,” Letitia broke in. “Now, Mr Gibbs, I decline to talk to or with either of my unwelcome visitors. If you have to conduct this official inquisition, go on with it, but I refuse to speak except to answer your questions. Eliza, you are not to talk, either.” “Good!” said Gibbs, “just what I want.” And he spoke sincerely, for he began to see that he would learn little from the display of rancor and temper that moved them all. He put definite and straightforward questions, and elicited the information that they were all in their beds and asleep at the hour of the murder. This could not be corroborated from the very nature of things, but he let it pass. There was fierce disagreement as to which had first declared a willingness to kill Sir Herbert Binney, and which had said she, too, was inclined to the deed, but it was admitted that such hasty and unconsidered declarations had been made. In fact, the gist of the long and difficult grilling was an apparent determination on the part of each one of the two factions to accuse the other, and a most plausible and complacent assumption of innocence by both.