Mrs. Sellars shook her head mournfully. "I'm not so sure of that, my dear," was her reply. "The balcony runs along the front of all three windows, and as they are old and shaky, like all the house, he could easily have slipped a knife between the upper and lower sashes and pressed back the snick." "But in that case Mrs. Pentreddle, thinking a burglar was trying to get in, would have shrieked for assistance," argued Miss Carrol. "Who would hear her?" asked Mrs. Sellars very pertinently. "There was no one in the house, and I daresay no one in the road, as scarcely anyone comes along so far as this; on a foggy night, too. Who would come here on a foggy night? No. The villain found poor Martha all alone and stuck her like a pig. You shouldn't have left her." "She asked me to." "She asked you to?" repeated Mrs. Sellars, her round eyes growing rounder with astonishment. "Asked you to what?" "To go on an errand, and"----Patricia checked herself, as it was unnecessary to repeat her story twice, and she wished to tell it in the presence of the police-officer. "It's too long to tell you now," she said hastily, and looked in the glass to see that her hair was in order. "Come downstairs, and let me see the man in charge of the case." "Oh!" wailed Mrs. Sellars, submitting to be led out of the room. "Oh, that I should have lived to hear Martha called a case! And Bunson called her 'the remains.' Such an insult!" "What did Bunson say exactly?" inquired Patricia quickly. "He said that he and Matilda and Sarah and Eliza came round by the back and entered the house by the kitchen. While Matilda made up the fire and put on the kettle, Bunson went up to the dining-room to see if the supper was all right. Nothing was disturbed, so he went to look into the drawing-room, expecting to see Martha and you. But he only found Martha lying dead and icy cold on the sofa, covered with blood from her jugular vein. She never did have much blood, poor dear!" sobbed Mrs. Sellars; "but what she had she lost, for she died from losing it, too hurriedly." "And what else did----" "There's nothing else," interrupted Mrs. Sellars, waving her arms in a dramatic manner. "Everyone's upset and can't eat and can't go to bed, and they're all sitting in the dining-room, because Inspector Harkness won't let them sit in the drawing-room." "Is Inspector Harkness the man I am to see?" "Yes. He's in the drawing-room, and told me to bring you to him as soon as you could stand. He saw the cabman who brought you, and asked him where you had entered the cab. The man said at Hyde Park Corner about half-past eleven, which may or may not be true, for I can't understand what you should be doing there at this time of night." "It's quite true," said Miss Carrol quietly. "I lost myself in the fog." "But why did you leave the house?"