“Joe!”
Bassett stared into her eyes. He thought her senses were giving way:
“Anne, darling, what’s the matter? Joe’s not here—you’ve just said so yourself.”
“I said what wasn’t true—he’s there.”
He caught her arms and drew her to her feet:
“What do you mean?”
“I know it, I’ve seen him.”
“Seen Joe himself?”
“Last night when I came down for the book. He’s hiding up there—I thought he was safe. And now they’ll find him.”
Bassett knew she was telling the truth. His mind took a sweep backward over the last twenty-four hours—she had known it all along, played a desperate game single-handed. In flashes of retrospect came her questions to him in the garden, her ashen face when they had burst in upon her the night before. The situation, accepted and familiar, was suddenly shaken apart like the pattern in a kaleidoscope and had fallen into another shape, a shape so unexpected and horrible that he stood frozen looking over her shoulder into its unfolding dreadfulness.