Somewhat later in the forenoon, I was practically alone in the house. I knew that Debora had gone off into the grounds with a book, and I did not care to disturb her. Bardolph Just had gone down into London on business. I was lounging at my full length in an easy chair in the dining-room, smoking, and reading the newspaper, when the door opened softly, and Martha Leach came in. I did not turn my head, but I saw her moving round the room in a large mirror hanging on the wall opposite my chair. Indeed, our eyes met in that mirror, before they met elsewhere. She stopped, and, somewhat to my surprise, spoke.
"You are a very brave man," she said, with a quick glance at the long windows, as though fearing interruption. "And a strong man, too."
"Who told you that?" I asked, without shifting my position.
"No one tells me anything, and I don't need to be told," she answered. "I find out things for myself; I watch, and discover."
I seemed to have a dim inkling of what was coming, but I think my face betrayed nothing. I lowered the newspaper to my knee, and went on smoking, and watching her in the mirror.
"I saw you last night in the eastern corridor; I saw you catch that girl just in time," she went on, in the same breathless sort of whisper. "A moment later, and that would have been death."
"You seem to know a great deal about it," I answered. "Perhaps you can tell me something else."
She laughed insolently, and shrugged her shoulders. I kept my eyes upon her in the mirror. "Anything you like," she replied.
"Then tell me how you could see anything that happened in the eastern corridor last night," was my answer.
"I was in the grounds—I had been there a long time," she whispered, her eyes growing more excited. "I did not know about the door; I only knew that something was going to happen, because the doctor kept moving about all the evening. I watched him go out of his room—I mean that I saw the light disappear, and knew that he had not put it out; I saw it go across the windows as he moved. I thought he was going to your room, and so I went round there; and then I saw your light go out. And then, as by a miracle, I saw that wall open, and the doctor stood there, like a spirit. I saw him before the light was puffed out. Then I waited to see what would happen."