“No, nobody could have got in. I had my eye on the door all the time. I was never away from it. To continue: The whole house-front was dark when I went outside, except for some windows in the little tower above the Corinthian’s Room. They were lit up.”
“That’s Eric Dangerfield’s room,” interjected Westenhanger.
“Quite right. You’ll hear more about that when I come to it, but let’s take things as they happened. Almost as soon as I got outside there was a terrific flash—blinding. And then the father and mother of all the thunder-claps. I found in the morning it had struck one of the trees near by. That was at twelve thirty-nine p.m. exact—I looked at my watch by the next flash which came immediately after.”
“That must have been the peal that frightened me,” Nina interjected. “It was the loudest I ever heard.”
“Within a minute or two,” continued Wraxall, “a light went up at the end of the east wing.”
“That was in my room,” confirmed Cynthia Pennard.
“We can ignore it for the present, then,” said Wraxall. “I’m just giving you what I saw. About five minutes later—that would be about ten minutes to one by rough reckoning—a light appeared in the Corinthian’s Room——”
“Ah!” exclaimed Freddie Stickney. “This is getting hotter.”
“Only another of your mare’s nests, Freddie,” explained Douglas. “It was I who switched that on.”
Wraxall continued without taking any notice.