"Yes, sir. Do you care to hear about it? When Tempest began barking, both my wife and I thought it was Mr. John returning, especially when my bell rang from the library. I hurried to dress; and — and one must be fully dressed, and answer within two minutes according to the rule, or Mr. Maurice. " For a flash, an old and very tired man looked back at them before Thompson froze again to impassiveness. "My wife (the cook, sir) looked out of the side window, but the roof of the porte-cochere is there so she couldn't see anything. But she noticed something else. Of course it was dark and snowing, but there were a few windows lighted at the back of the house (those tall windows) and she saw somebody running down towards the pavilion. That's all,
"Oh, yes. Yes, I see. Who was this person?"
"How could she tell, sir? She couldn't! She couldn't even tell."
"Whether it was a man or a woman," supplied Masters, with a heavy dryness. "Just so. Now, then. Go and get your wife and tell her to come down here."
Thompson turned abruptly. "I swear this is for the best, Miss Kate! They'd have found it out! And I couldn't have them thinking either Mr. John or-" He clenched his hands.
"Yes, I see," said Masters. "Quite. Cut along." As the door closed, Masters turned to Katharine with an air of heavy geniality. "Now what do you want to bet, Miss Bohun, that what he was going to say wasn't, 'Mr. John or you?' Eh? I think we'll find Mrs. T. believes it was a woman. He heard a good deal. He's foxy enough. He only spoke when he was sure it couldn't have been you. Because you were exchanging words with Mr. Rainger upstairs in the hall by the bedrooms at the same time this, um, `person' was running towards the pavilion, and he doesn't think you'd be fool enough to invent a story like that. Eh?"
She leaned back in the oak chair, her gray dress sombre among shadows, the gauze scarf floating at her throat. Her rather full breast rose and fell. The pale face against the oak, the luminous brown eyes with brows turning up slightly at the outer corners, — that, Bennett suddenly realized, was the weirdly ancient effect like one of the gilt-framed portraits in the dining-hall, which gave her the resemblance to Marcia Tait. And that was all. He realized that he was not falling in love with a ghost, but that he was falling in love with Katharine Bohun.
"How do you know," she said suddenly, "that I didn't invent the story? If Rainger said I tried to kill Marcia once last night, he wouldn't be likely to support what I told you, would he? We don't know when Mrs. Thompson saw somebody out on the lawn, if she did see somebody. The dog was barking a long time. The person might have left the house just a little after I spoke to Rainger… Oh, I know what you're
thinking, and it's absurd! Won't you see it? The person you're thinking of wouldn't hurt a fly"
"Nothing like a good friend," said Masters sagely. "Excuse me, Miss: where did you get those bruises on your neck?"