Twilight Sleep
dark lantern. . . Yes; she was almost sure he had a mask; at any rate she couldn't see his face; the police had found the track of muddy feet on the pantry linoleum, and up the back stairs.
Lita had screamed, and Nona had dashed to the rescue; yes, and Mr. Manford—Lita thought Mr. Manford had perhaps got there before Nona. But then again, she wasn't sure. . . The fact was that Lita had been shattered by the night's experience, and her evidence, if not self-contradictory, was at least incoherent.
The only really lucid witnesses were Powder, the butler, and Nona Manford herself. Their statements agreed exactly, or at least dovetailed into each other with perfect precision, the one completing the other. Nona had been first on the scene: she had seen the man in the room—she too thought that he was masked and he had turned on her and fired. At that moment her father, hearing the shots, had rushed in, half-dressed; and as he did so the burglar fled. Some one professed to have seen him running away through the rain and darkness; but no one had seen his face, and there was no way of identifying him. The only positive proof of his presence—except for the shot—was the discovery by Powder, of those carefully guarded footprints on the pantry floor; and these, of course, might eventually help to trace the criminal. As for the revolver, that also had disappeared; and the bullets, one of which had been found lodged in the door, the other in the
