Again, take the question supposed to have been put by Harding when the conversation was resumed on the second day. It is on a different footing from the others. “I asked him,” said Harding, “did you always have a screen up in that cubicle?” and Ross is supposed to have replied: “No; I used the one in the parlour—the red screen.” The reference, apparently, was to the screen which hung in the arched doorway between the two main rooms of the saloon. Can any earthly reason be suggested why Harding should have put such a question to Ross? The only possible answer is: “None whatever.” But a reason can be suggested why, if his story were an invention, he should have invented that particular part of it. Harding had been in the saloon, and he could not have missed the conspicuous screen that hung between the two rooms. He would probably not have remembered clearly whether there was a curtain over the cubicle door or not. For aught he knew, he might have been confronted by fifty witnesses who could swear truly that there never had been a curtain there. He tried to rise to the occasion, and invented the ludicrous story of Ross having said that he removed the large curtain and hung it over the cubicle door to hide the little girl from the public gaze—the same little girl as, according to Matthews, Ross got deliberately to reveal herself when Matthews took her hasty glance over Stanley Ross’s shoulder. The idea of Ross removing the large curtain from between the rooms and hanging it over the cubicle door (all in the presence of Stanley), in order to prevent Stanley, amongst others, from seeing the girl, would be laughable if anything about this terrible case could be laughable.