“Yes, I should like to hear what really happened. That is, if you feel yourself at liberty to tell me, of course. I don’t want to force confidences about—well, about the second lady in the case.” “About Barbara? Oh, there’s nothing that reflects on her, and I think you ought to hear the truth. I always meant to tell you the whole thing if you found out that I did it, and of course, if you were intending to take any drastic step, such as telling the police or trying to get Jefferson arrested. That’s why I made you promise to tell me before you did anything like that.” “Quite so,” Roger nodded understandingly. “A good many things are plain to me now. Why you hung back so much and were so unenthusiastic and threw cold water on everything and pretended to be so dull and refused to believe that a murder had been committed at all, although I’d proved it to you beyond any shadow of doubt.” “I was trying to keep you off the right track all the time. I really never thought you’d find out.” “Perhaps I shouldn’t have done if the significance of that hair hadn’t dawned on me at last. After that everything seemed to come in a series of flashes. Even then I might not have hit on the truth with such certainty if two particular photographs hadn’t suddenly developed themselves in my mind.” “Tell me all your side of it, then I’ll tell you mine.” “Very well. As I said, that hair was the clue to the whole thing. I’d taken it quite idly out of my pocket out there in the garden and was having a look at it, when it suddenly struck me that whosoever it might be it was certainly not one of Mrs. Plant’s. I stared at it hard enough then, I can tell you, and the second realization occurred to me that, from the colour at any rate, it looked uncommonly like one of Barbara’s. Then the first of the pictures flashed across my mind. It was of Graves sorting the post just before lunch yesterday. He had only three letters, and they were all of exactly the same appearance; same shaped envelopes and typewritten addresses. One was for Mrs. Plant, one for Jefferson—and one for Barbara. The first two I’d already accounted for, now I seemed to be accounting for the third. Add to all that Barbara’s ill-concealed agitation the next morning and the fact that, for no apparent cause whatever, she broke off her engagement to you at the same time, and the thing was as plain as daylight—Barbara was also in the library that night and for some reason or other the poor kid had got into Stanworth’s clutches.” “_She_ hadn’t,” Alec put in. “It was——”