“How can I help you?” he asked. “Can I alter facts?” He stopped. His face brightened again, as if some sudden sense of relief had come to him. “I did try to help you,” he went on. “I told you that Mrs. Beauly’s absence was a device to screen herself from suspicion; I told you that the poison might have been given by Mrs. Beauly’s maid. Has reflection convinced you? Do you see something in the idea?” This return to Mrs. Beauly gave me my first chance of leading the talk to the right topic. “I see nothing in the idea,” I answered. “I see no motive. Had the maid any reason to be an enemy to the late Mrs. Eustace?” “Nobody had any reason to be an enemy to the late Mrs. Eustace!” he broke out, loudly and vehemently. “She was all goodness, all kindness; she never injured any human creature in thought or deed. She was a saint upon earth. Respect her memory! Let the martyr rest in her grave!” He covered his face again with his hands, and shook and shuddered under the paroxysm of emotion that I had roused in him. Ariel suddenly and softly left her stool, and approached me. “Do you see my ten claws?” she whispered, holding out her hands. “Vex the Master again, and you will feel my ten claws on your throat!” Benjamin rose from his seat: he had seen the action, without hearing the words. I signed to him to keep his place. Ariel returned to her stool, and looked up again at her master. “Don’t cry,” she said. “Come on. Here are the strings. Tease me again. Make me screech with the smart of it.” He never answered, and never moved. Ariel bent her slow mind to meet the difficulty of attracting his attention. I saw it in her frowning brows, in her colorless eyes looking at me vacantly. On a sudden, she joyfully struck the open palm of one of her hands with the fist of the other. She had triumphed. She had got an idea. “Master!” she cried. “Master! You haven’t told me a story for ever so long. Puzzle my thick head. Make my flesh creep. Come on. A good long story. All blood and crimes.”