"I heard the bone snap. I was trying to get up from the floor when he hit me a second time; that time I think it must have got me on the head--down I went again, for good. Yet I was conscious that he kept on hitting me as I lay motionless. What is still queerer--I can't explain it, but I had an extraordinary feeling that Sydney Beaton had come into the room, that he saw Dodwell raining blows down on me, that he said something, that Dodwell gave a yell at the sight of him, and ran away. That's all I can remember of what took place at Avonham." "It seems to be a pretty good deal." This was Clifford. He turned to Dodwell. "What do you think?" "It's a farrago of lies." "Somehow, Dodwell, you don't look as if it were a farrago of lies. I don't want to prejudice the minds of the judge and jury before whom you will possibly be brought, but if I were betting I should be inclined to lay odds--against you. Do you deny that you did meet Draycott in the conservatory after the rest of us had gone to bed?" "What right have you to ask me questions?" "I see; that's the tone you take! What right has anyone to ask you questions? As I expected--you deny that you quarrelled with Draycott?" "What have my private affairs to do with you?" "Your private affairs? It has come to that! You call attempted murder your private affair? Do you deny that you did strike Draycott as he says?" "I deny everything." "I see--a general denial. You know, Dodwell, you should have started denying at the first. When you tacitly admit that you did meet Draycott, and that you did quarrel with him, you have already reached the point at which a general denial only tells against you. What I don't understand, Draycott, is, where have you been since that night? I don't know if you are aware that the British public has been taking a most lively interest in your private affairs, and that all sorts of more or less interested persons have been searching for you high and low. It's a good time ago, you know, since the Easter ball. The puzzle is, in what unfindable place have you been hidden all this while?" "I've been with Beaton." "You've been--where? Pardon me, Miss Forster, you were going to speak." "I--I was only going to ask him what he meant by--by saying that he has been with Mr. Beaton." "It is not altogether easy to explain; you will get a fuller explanation from someone else; I can only tell you what I know. The last thing I remembered at Avonham was, as I have told you, that Dodwell was beating me about the head with a club as I lay on the floor."