and creaking.”      

       “And you didn’t see anything else, anything that attracted your attention?”      

       “No, nothing—” Knoll did not finish his sentence, but began another instead. He had suddenly remembered something which had seemed to him of no importance before. “There was a light that went out suddenly.”      

       “Where?”      

       “In the side of the house that I could see from my place. There was a lamp in the last window of the second story, a lamp with a red shade. That lamp went out all at once.”      

       “Was the window open?”      

       “Yes.”      

       “There was a strong wind that night, might not the wind have blown the lamp out?”      

       “No, that wasn’t it,” said Knoll, rising hastily.     

       “Well, how was it?” asked Muller calmly.     

       “A hand put out the lamp.”      

       “Whose hand?”      

       “I couldn’t see that. The light was so low on account of the shade that I couldn’t see the person who stood there.”      

       “And you don’t know whether it was a man or a woman?”      

       “No, I just saw a hand, more like a shadow it was.”      

       “Well, it doesn’t matter much anyway. It was after nine o’clock and many people go to bed about that time,” said Muller, who did not see much value in this incident.     

       But Knoll shook his head. “The person who put out that light didn’t go to bed, at least not right away,” he said eagerly. “I looked over after a while to the place where the red light was and I saw something else.”      

       “Well, what was it you saw?”      

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