“You see,” Barnett explained, “I am a singer, and my brother, here, accompanies me on various instruments, and of course we have to practise. But we don’t practise on the nights when Ponting is busy--Thursdays and Fridays--as he said that the music disturbed him. To-night, however, we made a little mistake. I happen to have got a new song that I am anxious to get ready--it has an illustrative accompaniment on the clarinet, which my brother will play. We were so much taken up with the new song that we all forgot what day of the week it was, and started to have a good practise. But before we had got through the first verse, Ponting came round, battering at the door like a madman. My wife went out and pacified him, and of course we shut down for the evening.” While Mr. Barnett was giving his explanation, I looked about the room with vague curiosity. Somehow--I cannot tell exactly how--I was sensible of something queer in the atmosphere of this place; of a certain indefinite sense of tension. Mrs. Barnett looked pale and flurried. Her husband, in spite of his volubility, seemed ill at ease, and the brother, who sat huddled in an easy-chair, nursing a dark-coloured Persian cat, stared into the fire, and neither moved nor spoke. And again I looked at the red table-cloth and wondered what it covered. “By the way,” said Barnett, after a brief pause, “what is the point of these inquiries of yours? About Ponting, I mean. What does it matter to you where he was this evening?” As he spoke, he produced a pipe and tobacco-pouch and proceeded to fill the former, holding it in his bandaged right hand and filling it with his left. The facility with which he did this suggested that he was left-handed, an inference that was confirmed by the ease with which he struck the match with his left hand, and by the fact that he wore a wrist-watch on his right wrist. “Your question is a perfectly natural one,” said Thorndyke. “The answer to it is that a very terrible thing has happened. Miss Millicent Fawcett, who is, I think, a connexion of yours, met her death this evening under circumstances of grave suspicion. She died, either by her own hand or by the hand of a murderer, a few minutes before nine o’clock. Hence it has become necessary to ascertain the whereabouts at that time of any persons on whom suspicion might reasonably fall.” “Good God!” exclaimed Barnett. “What a shocking thing!” The exclamation was followed by a deep silence, amidst which I could hear the barking of a dog in an adjacent room, the unmistakable sharp, treble yelp of a Pekinese. And again I seemed to be aware of a strange sense of tension in the occupants of this room. On hearing Thorndyke’s answer, Mrs. Barnett had turned deadly pale and let her head fall forward on her hand. Her husband had sunk on to a chair, and he, too, looked pale and deeply shocked, while the brother continued to stare silently into the fire.