"Go with him," ordered Doctor Askew. "I'll put out the lights." Then he touched my elbow and gave me a slight nod. "I see your point of course. But I hope to God you've hit somewhere near it?" "Doctor," I replied, "this account of mine is exact. I'll tell you later how I know that." "Ah!" he grunted, with a green-blue flash of eyes. "What a lucky devil I am!... But I've felt all along this would prove a rewarding case." IV Up to this point I have been necessarily thus detailed, but I am eager now to win past the cruder melodrama of this insanely disordered night. I am eager to win back from all these damnable and distracting things to Susan. This book is hers, not mine; it is certainly not Sergeant Conlon's or Doctor Askew's. So you will forgive me, and understand, if I present little more than a summary of the immediately following hours. We found Maltby and Lucette in the drawing-room, worn out with their night-long vigil; Maltby, somnolent and savage; Lucette still keyed high, suffering from exasperated nerves which--perhaps for the first time in her life--she could not control. They were seated as far apart as the room permitted, having long since talked themselves out, and were engaged, I think, in tacitly hating one another. The situation was almost impossible; yet I knew I must dominate it somehow, and begin by dominating myself--and in the end, with Conlon's and Doctor Askew's help, I succeeded. Conlon, I confess, proved to be an unexpected ally all through. "Now, Mrs. Arthur, and you, Mr. Phar," he stated at once as we entered the drawing-room together, "I've brought Mr. Hunt in here to read you his guess at what happened last evenin'. Doctor Askew'll be with us in a minute, and _he's_ got somethin' to lay before you.... No; Miss Blake's not come round yet. The doc'll explain about her. But we'll hear from Mr. Hunt first, see? I've examined him and I'm satisfied he's straight. You've known him long enough to form your own opinions, but that's mine. Oh, here's the doc! Go on, Mr. Hunt." With this lead, I was at length able to persuade Lucette and Maltby to listen, sullenly enough, to my written analysis. My feeling toward them both, though better concealed, was quite as hostile as theirs toward me, but I saw that I caught their reluctant attention and that Maltby was somewhat impressed by what I had written, and by my interjected amplifications of the more salient points. I had been careful to introduce no facts not given me by Sergeant Conlon, and when I had finished, ignoring Lucette's instant murmur of impatience and incredulity, I turned to him and said: "Sergeant, is there anything known to you and not known to me--any one detail discovered during your examination of Mrs. Hunt's boudoir, say--which makes my deductions impossible or absurd?" He reflected a moment, then acknowledged: "Well, no, Mr. Hunt. Things might 'a' happened like that; maybe they did. But just sayin' so don't prove they did!"