'Your slippers and a kimono,'
he would naturally have ordered. She put them on mechanically.
Then he must have ordered her to go out of the door and down the
stairs. Clutching Hand must have followed and as he did so he
would have cautiously put out the lights."
We were following, spell-bound, Kennedy's graphic reconstruction
of what must have happened. Evidently he had struck close to the
truth. Elaine's eyes were closed. Gently Kennedy led her along.
"Now, Miss Dodge," he encouraged, "try--try hard to recollect just
what it was that happened last night--everything."
As Kennedy paused after his quick recital, she seemed to tremble
all over. Slowly she began to speak. We stood awestruck. Kennedy
had been right!
The girl was now living over again those minutes that had been
forgotten--blotted out by the drug.
And it was all real to her, too,--terribly real. She was speaking,
plainly in terror.
"I see a man--oh, such a figure--with a mask. He holds a gun in my
face--he threatens me. I put on my kimono and slippers, as he
tells me. I am in a daze. I know what I am doing--and I don't
know. I go out with him, downstairs, into the library."
Elaine shuddered again at the recollection. "Ugh! The room is
dark, the room where he killed my father. Moonlight outside
streams in. This masked man and I come in.
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