Page:Chipperfield--Unseen Hands.djvu/72

60 just a fractional slip of the razor. The least unexpected noise might have been the innocent cause. Oh, he should not have attempted to shave himself while he was so nervous!"

Her hands fluttered for a moment and then gripped the arms of her chair; and the detective saw her face twitch once and settle again into its masklike fixity.

"What noise could there have been?" Odell asked. "Was anyone else on the third floor at that time?"

"No. Nan has the front room directly opposite, but she is the earliest riser of us all; the other two are guest-chambers and were unoccupied. There are always noises about an old house like this, though. Poor Julian might have heard the banging of an outside shutter from the rear, or one of the doors might have closed; there was quite a high wind that morning as I recall it, and all the windows were open. There can be no other way to account for it, Sergeant Odell. No one could have gotten into the house; and who—who would have wanted his life?"

"Who wanted to take his brother's last night, Miss Meade, or his stepfather's this morning?" Odell suggested quietly.

"That is what is torturing me," she exclaimed. "The sheer purposelessness of such an act. The boys have been a—a little wild, I am afraid; but they have done no harm, and no one could bear such terrible enmity against either of them. And Richard, Mr. Lorne, who could want to harm him? That is why it all seems like some hideous nightmare; that, and the sheer impossibility of anyone breaking into the house or—or knowing that someone of the family was going to sit beneath the portrait."