The manager immediately protested that she _must be_ mistaken, that his guest was too well known, his position too assured, to identify him in any way with the man at the rock. As the girl realized that her story was doubted, a strange numbness seized her, and she had a paralyzing premonition that not only would her well-founded suspicions prove futile, as well as her long, watchful hours, and her many efforts to clear Philip, but that possibly these things would increase the circumstantial suspicions already directed towards him. Seeing the apparent uselessness of further conversation the girl rose, oppressed by the dread that if she remained in that room a moment longer she would burst into tears. But no, _she would not give up_! She would go somewhere and think it all over, to see if there was not some way of ascertaining who the man was. Perhaps she could go again to the woods,—she would try and get behind that rock,—and make sure— At this moment Sheila, who was standing with Jean by the window, watching the automobiles constantly coming and going in front of the hotel, uttered a sharp cry. As Nathalie turned towards the child as if to still her, she heard her exclaim: “Oh, Jean, there’s the funny ’phone man! See, there he is! Don’t you remember, he’s the man who put the black trumpet on top of his head when he was in the ’phone-box?” Sheila always called the receiver a “black trumpet.” Nathalie, aroused by the remark, mechanically allowed her glance to follow the direction of the child’s finger, as she pointed towards Mr. Keating, who was coming up the walk leading to the hotel. Unconsciously she bent forward, and with alert eyes watched the man, for she had again seen that peculiar motion of the head that had identified him as the man whom she had seen digging in the woods. But Sheila’s exclamation had been overheard by the detective, who stepped quickly to the child’s side, crying: “What was that you said, little girl, about a funny ’phone man? Tell me about him.” The man’s manner was so abrupt and commanding, that Sheila shrank back against Nathalie, and shyly hid her face. But the girl, startled also by Mr. Grenoble’s abruptness, with a quick glance at his face, cried, “Yes, Sheila, tell the gentleman what you saw.” Oh, yes, she remembered now that the two children had told her about this “funny ’phone man” whom they had seen at the hotel one day, but she had paid no attention to their prattle at the time. Sheila, with a quick upward glance into the girl’s face, as if instantly divining the seriousness of the situation, answered, “Why, that’s the man I saw in the ’phone-box,” again pointing towards the Count, who had stopped to chat with a lady on the walk. “He put the black trumpet right up on top of his head, like this,”—she imitated the man’s motion,—“when he was talking through the ’phone.”