The girl's hand shook a little as she opened the knife he passed her, and just then a cry came down faintly from one of the rooms above. Barbara swung round swiftly, and moved into the corridor.
"Nothing very dreadful has happened, and I am coming back in a minute or two, but whatever you do don't come down," she said authoritatively, and Brooke heard a door swing to above.
Then she came towards him quietly, and laid a hand on his shoulder.
"Keep still, and I will not be long. Katty is apt to lose her head," she said.
Her fingers still quivered a little, but she was deft in spite of it, and when the slit sleeve fell away Brooke sat down on the table with a little smile.
"Very sorry to trouble you," he said. "I don't know much about these things, but the artery evidently isn't cut, and I don't think the bone is touched. That means there can't be very much harm done. Would you mind tying my handkerchief tightly round it where I've laid my finger?"
Barbara, who did so, afterwards sat down in the nearest chair, for she felt a trifle breathless as well as somewhat limp, and there was an embarrassing silence, while for no very apparent reason they now avoided looking at one another. A little filmy smoke still drifted about the room, and a short steel bar, a tin case, and a litter of papers lay between them on the floor. There were red splashes on one or two of the latter.
"The man must have dropped them," said Barbara, quietly, though her voice was still not quite her usual one. "He, of course, brought the bar to open the door with."
Brooke did not answer the last remark.
"I fancy he dropped them when he flung the door in my face," he said.