“It not only proves she was in here, but it proves a good deal more. This is the way she was, with the table as we found it close in front of her. The ends of her sash would have been in contact with the table legs. Now she jumped up quickly--do you get that? If she’d gone slow or had time to think she’d have felt the pull and unloosed the sash--but she sprang up, didn’t notice.” He looked from one to the other, his lean face alight. “Frightened,” said Bassett. “So frightened she didn’t feel it, and moved with such force she tore the fringe off. That scare took her up from the seat and sent her flying through the doorway for the Point.” “Hold on now,” said Williams. “If she was as scared as that why didn’t she go for the house where there were people?” “Because she was too scared to think. Some one with a pistol was on the other side of the table.” He rose and went to the entrance facing the Point. “And the person with the pistol shot at her from here--winged her as she ran.” He turned to Bassett. “That’s why you saw no one when you looked out after you first heard the shot. The murderer was in here lying low.” “Yes.” Bassett thought back over the moment when he had stood in the living-room doorway. “That’s the only place he could have been or I’d have seen him. But they wouldn’t have been any time together--couldn’t have had a quarrel or a scene. According to Mrs. Cornell it was only six or seven minutes after she saw Sybil go out that she heard the shot. That would give them only two or three minutes in here.” “Time enough to draw a gun and back it up with a few sentences. It bears out what I’ve thought from the start--not an accidental meeting but a date, to which the woman came unsuspecting and the other primed to kill.” “Then Mrs. Stokes got on to that date,” said Williams, “and broke in on it. And there’s only one person that date could have been with--Stokes.” Bassett’s nerves were raw with strain and anxiety. This reiteration of a rendezvous with Stokes maddened him: “But it couldn’t have been. I’ve told you. I knew Miss Saunders well. I know what she felt about the man, and besides I have the evidence of my own eyes that she avoided him in every way she could. Make an appointment to meet him alone! She’d as soon make an appointment with Satan.” Neither of the men answered him for a moment. Williams regarded his sentiment with respect. He had been a friend of the dead girl’s and it was natural he should stand up for her, whether rightly or wrongly Williams was not yet sure. Rawson was impressed; he had formed a high opinion of the director’s candor and truthfulness and his words weighed with him: