Augusta Huiell Seaman

“ I’ve just had a sudden inspiration! Elspeth, I believe Tomkins knows a lot about this matter—more than any one else except Uncle himself. Don’t you remember what he told you once? He was with Uncle when all this happened. He ought to know as much as we do. You go downstairs and use the telephone in Uncle's study and get Tomkins at the hospital and tell him to come here at once! We can't get hold of him a minute too soon!”
“But just suppose Mr. Cookson should be in there—or in the library?” I quavered.
“Wait till he gets out, then!” commanded Connie. ”

“ So you’ll be warned. Now go and do it at once, so you can catch Tomkins there before he goes out!”
It was certainly unfortunate that Connie's accident made all the difficult tasks fall to me, for I’m not naturally as brave or resourceful as she is. She would have gone about these things with positive joy; whereas it was torture to me, and the nervous strain of anticipating that something might go wrong was enough to give me brain-fever. However, I went downstairs and found Mr. Cookson writing in the library, so I made the excuse of looking for a book there and came up again. ”

“ For, staring straight in front of me, I beheld the seat of the old stone bench slowly and cautiously and almost noiselessly rising to an upright position, propelled by a hand and an arm in a dark sleeve, plainly visible in the moonlight! ”