Helen smiled engagingly. She had found time for deliberation while quibbling, and now her mind was made up. “I was so frightened I could neither stand up nor sit down. I was leaning against that pillar over there.” She pointed.
“How did you happen to leave your seat?”
Helen told him of the flitting shadow that had caused her to leave her father and run to the rear of the house.
“And what did you see while you were leaning against the pillar?” was Culligore’s next question.
Helen searched her mind for words vivid enough to recount her impressions during the terrible moments just before the drop of the curtain, but she felt her description was both hazy and fragmentary. Her picture of the face that had flashed past her in the dark was blurred and unreal, like one’s recollection of a dream.
When she had done her best, Culligore walked back and forth for a time. Standing in an attitude of strained tensity, she wondered what his next question would be. Suddenly he stopped squarely in front of her, and again she had an uncomfortable feeling that his deceptively lazy eyes were reading her thoughts.
“What else?” he demanded quietly. “What you have told me so far is pretty good, but you’re still holding back the most important thing—the thing you didn’t want to tell about last night.”
“How—how do you know that?” she asked.
He gave another snortlike chuckle. “Common horse sense tells me. The reason you didn’t tell about the things you saw while leaning against the post was because you were afraid they would lead you on to a subject you didn’t want to discuss. You were afraid that if you got started you might get tangled up and wouldn’t be able to stop.”
Helen could only stare at him. He had stated the truth far more clearly than she herself could have done.