"Forenoon or afternoon?"
Bertha's knitted forehead brought no clarity to her recollections.
"I've forgotten, Miss Barlow. I know it was the hot summer time, but forenoon or afternoon, that's all gone from me now."
"But you will try to bring it back, Bertha? It may be important. Mr. Shagarach is a wonderfully wise man who could build up a great explanation out of a little thing like that. You will tell him all you know if he comes to see you?"
"I'll be as free-spoken as I choose, and forty inspectors won't stop me."
"Could you describe the study again, Bertha, just as it looked when you were dusting it, with Robert standing over the hearth?"
"Why, you know the room, Miss Barlow—square, high-studded, with two windows, the professor's desk at one and the bird cage before the other. Shelves and books all round, hundreds of them, and magazines and papers scattered about. Chairs, pictures, the safe and the professor's things just as he left them—his slippers on the floor, his spectacles and bible on the desk, his dressing-gown over the back of the arm-chair——"
"And a waste-basket?"
"Oh, yes, the big waste-basket always beside his desk. The professor had so much writing to do."
"Was it full?"