"Go on."

She took a breath. "I felt the way one would feel about memorizing the pattern on the back of a poisonous snake. That it would be useful knowledge If you want to know," she went on with sudden decision, "he made me feel like an angry ghost.

"The bird-faced man went away. The other stayed to watch me eat, but I only pretended to eat. It wasn't hard to do. I just stared at him, like this.' She lowered her face, then raised it again abruptly to fix upon me with a stare of icy and fanatic bellicosity. Somehow the expression accentuated her peculiar facial bone structure. My consciousness of the unfeminine squareness of her jaw was intensified, and I noticed for the first time a certain skull-like quality about her features. Her eyes seemed to dilate unblinkingly. The effect was so unnerving and the fixity of her attention upon me so embarrassing that I found myself automatically dropping my eyes and wandering over to the window just to evade that basilisk glare.

"It worked just like that," she went on cheerfully. "I hid the porridge in the bedclothes and he took the bowl and went away."

"How did you know to do that?" asked my friend. He was leaning back in his chair with his fingertips pressed together, eyelids half closed, looking as if he were on the verge of falling asleep; by which familiar signs I knew that the lady's narrative had his utmost attention.

"I don't know how I knew. It was-it was self-evident." There were signs of the return of the lady's frustrated confusion.

"Never mind. Go on," encouraged Holmes. "What did you do next?"

"I looked around the room. It was growing dark. I tore the sheet down from the window and looked out. There was a little yard with a wall around it. I sat for a long time in the dark, trying to think; but my mind would not focus. The window was stuck-the woodwork was painted over many times. I could not move it. The room began to feel stuffy of a sudden. I wanted out. Once I had begun to feel afraid, the feeling grew very quickly. I wrapped the sheet from the bed round my arm and broke the window. Then I hung by the ledge and dropped down."