I stood like a post, still too bemused to have any questions ready. There were too many to ask. It was like a skein so tangled there was no loose thread to start with. "Did you know Harland was here when you came?" was what I finally said. She nodded: "I suspected it on Sunday afternoon. I was certain of it on Sunday night before I left New York." She dropped into a chair by the fire, and pointed me to one near-by at the table. "Sit down and let me tell it to you as it happened to me, my side of it. When you’ve heard that, you can read the statement he gave, then you’ll see it all. Straight from its beginning to its awful end here last night." Before she began I told her of our interview with Mrs. Whitehall and that we knew her true relationship to Barker. She seemed relieved and asked if her mother had also told us of her position with regard to Harland. When she saw how fully we’d been informed she gave a deep sigh and said: "Now you can understand why I prevaricated that day in Mr. Whitney’s office. I was trying to shield my father, to help him any way I could. Oh, if I’d known the truth then or you had—the truth you don’t know even yet! It was Johnston Barker that was murdered and Hollings Harland who murdered him!" I started forward, but she raised a silencing hand, her voice shaken and pleading: "Don’t, please, say anything. Let me go on in my own way. It’s so hard to tell." She dropped the hand to its fellow and holding them tight-clenched in her lap, said slowly: "If my mother told you of that conversation I had with Mr. Harland you know what I discovered then—that he loved me. I never suspected it before, but when he pressed me with questions about Johnston Barker, so unlike himself, vehement and excited, I understood and was sorry for him. I told him as much as I could then, explained my feeling for the man he was jealous of without telling my relationship, said how I respected and trusted him, what any girl might say of her father. He seemed relieved but went on to ask if Mr. Barker and I were not interested in some scheme, some undertaking of a secret nature. _That_ frightened me, it sounded as if he had found out about us, had been told something by someone. Taken by surprise, I answered with a half truth, that Mr. Barker _had_ a plan on foot for my welfare, that he wanted to help me and my mother to a better financial position, but that I was not yet at liberty to tell what it was. I saw he thought I meant business, and as I go on, you’ll see how that information gave him the confidence to do what he did later.