"All right. See anything else?" Hastings urged.
"Yes; I saw Berne Webster. He had made the noise which attracted my attention."
"How do you know that?"
"He must have. He was stooping down, too, on the other side of the body, facing me, when the light went on——"
Sloane, twisting nervously in his chair, cut into Wilton's narrative.
"I can put this much straight," he said in shrill complaint: "I turned on the light you're talking about. I hadn't been able to sleep."
"Let's have this, one at a time, if you don't mind, Mr. Sloane," the detective suggested, watching Webster.
The young man, staring with fascinated intensity at Judge Wilton, seemed to experience some new horror as he listened.
"He was on the other side of it," the judge continued, "and practically in the same position that I was. We faced each other across the body. I think that describes the discovery, as you call it. We immediately examined the woman, looking for the wound, and found it. When we saw she was dead, we came in to wake you—and try to get a doctor. I told Berne to do that."
During the last few sentences Hastings had been walking slowly from his chair to the library door and back, his hands gouged deep into his trouser-pockets, folds of his night-shirt protruding from and falling over the waistband of the trousers, the raincoat hanging baggily from his shoulders. Ludicrous as the costume was, however, the old man so dominated them still that none of them, not even Wilton, questioned his authority.