ndition) the
result of an excited fancy. But I have stated that such persons,
nervous, neurotic even as they may be, are not fanciful. I therefore
accept her evidence as true. And now, mark the consequence of that
acceptance. I am driven to admit that there must, from some source,
have been light in the room--a light faint enough, and diffused enough,
to escape the notice of Hester herself. This being so, it must have
proceeded from around, from below, or from above. There are no other
alternatives. Around these was nothing but the darkness of the night;
the room beneath, we know, was also in darkness. The light then came
from the room above--from the mechanic class-room. But there is only
one possible means by which the light from an upper can diffuse a lower
room. It _must_ be by a hole in the intermediate boards. We are thus
driven to the discovery of an aperture of some sort in the flooring of
that upper chamber. Given this, the mystery of the round white object
"driven" upward disappears. We at once ask, why not _drawn_ upward
through the newly-discovered aperture by a string too small to be
visible in the gloom? Assuredly it was drawn upward. And now having
established a hole in the ceiling of the room in which Hester stands,
is it unreasonable--even without further evidence--to suspect another
in the flooring? But we actually have this further evidence. As she
rushes to the door she falls, faints, and fractures the lower part of
her leg. Had she fallen _over_ some object, as you supposed, the result
might have been a fracture also, but in a different part of the body;
being where it was, it could only have been caused by placing the foot
inadvertently in a hole while the rest of the body was in rapid motion.
But this gives us an approximate idea of the _size_ of the lower hole;
it was at least big enough to admit the foot and lower leg, big enough
therefore to admit that "good-sized ball of cotton" of which the woman
speaks: and from the lower we are able to conjecture the size of the
upper. But how comes it that these holes are nowhere mentioned in the
evidence? It can only be because no one ever saw them. Yet the rooms
must have been examined by the police, who, if they existed, must have
seen them. They therefore did not exist: that is to say, the pieces
which had been removed from the floorings had by that time been neatly
replaced, and, in the case of the lower one, covered by the carpet, the
removal of which