Again we exchanged a glance.
"And you say that you expected to stay there again to-night?"
"Yes; but my sister hasn't been well for the past two days, so, as soon as Mrs. Lawrence fell asleep and I found she wouldn't need me, I hurried home. I found Harriet very nervous and excited, and finally persuaded her to take a soothing draught and go to bed. I was so tired that I fell asleep almost at once, and I knew nothing more until I was awakened by what seemed to be a kind of drumming on the head-board."
She stopped, shuddering. We, too, had heard that drumming!
"Yes," said Godfrey. "Your bed, I see, is backed against the closet partition—tight against it. It no doubt makes a kind of sounding-board."
"I suppose that's it. I felt for Harriet and found she wasn't there. That startled me wide awake. Again I heard that drumming, and sprang out of bed, lighted the lamp, and rushed to the closet to find that she had——"
The words ended in a sob, which she tried in vain to repress. Godfrey bent again over the figure on the bed.
"She used what is evidently a curtain cord," he said. "Don't look at her, Miss Kingdon. The death is an easy one, whatever it may appear."
"But why did she do it?" demanded Lucy Kingdon. "Why should she get up in the middle of the night, like that, and hang herself? What impulse was it——"
She stopped suddenly, regarding us fixedly, her face livid, her eyes agleam.