"No," I responded, "but you and Doctor Askew have, so you can easily put me right. Extraordinary as the whole thing is—the one deadly chance in perhaps a million—there's nothing impossible about it. Merely from the facts you've given me, Sergeant Conlon, I can reconstruct the whole scene—come pretty near it, at any rate. But the strength of my conviction is based on other grounds—don't lose sight of that! Miss Blake didn't kill Mrs. Hunt; she's incapable of such an action; and if she didn't, no one else did. An accident is the only alternative."
"Well, then," grunted Conlon, "tell us about it! It'll take some tellin'!"
"Hold on!" exclaimed Doctor Askew before I could begin. "Sorry, Mr. Hunt—but you remember, perhaps—when you first came in—I had half a mind to try something—an experiment?" I nodded. "Well, I've made up my mind. We'll try it right now, before it's too late. If it succeeds, it may yield us a few facts to go on. Your suppositions can come afterward."
I felt, as he spoke, that something behind his words belied their rudeness, that their rudeness was rather for Conlon's benefit than for mine. He got up briskly and crossed to the bedside. There after a moment he turned and motioned us both to join him.
As we did so, tiptoeing instinctively: "Yes—this is fortunate," he said; "she's at it again. Look."
Susan still lay as I had first seen her, with shut eyes, her arms extended outside the coverlet; but she was no longer entirely motionless. Her left arm lay relaxed, the palm of her left hand upward. I had often seen her hands lie inertly thus in her lap, the palms upward, in those moments of silent withdrawal which I have more than once described. But now her right hand was turned downward, the fingers slightly contracted, as if they held a pen, and the hand was creeping slowly on the coverlet from left to right; it would creep slowly in this way for perhaps eight inches, then draw quickly back to its point of starting and repeat the manœuvre. It was uncanny, this patient repetition—over and over—of a single restricted movement.
"My God," came from Conlon in a husky whisper, "is she dyin'—or what?"
"Far from it!" said Doctor Askew, his abrupt, crisp speech in almost ludicrous contrast to Conlon's sudden awe. "Get me some paper from that desk over there, Conlon. A pad, if possible."
He drew out a pencil from his pocket as he spoke. Conlon hesitated an instant, then obeyed, tiptoeing ponderously, with creaking boots, over to a daintily appointed writing-table, and returning with a block of linen paper. Doctor Askew, meanwhile, holding the pencil between his teeth, had lifted Susan's unresisting shoulders—too roughly, I thought—from the bed.
"Stick that other pillow under her," he ordered me, sharply enough in spite of the impeding pencil. "A little farther down—so!"