it
swiftly, with now and then brief, murmured comment on what he did and
saw. Although his ample night-shirt, stuffed into his equally baggy
trousers, contributed nothing but comicality to his appearance, the
others submitted without question to his domination. There was about him
suddenly an atmosphere of power that impressed even the little group of
awe-struck servants who stood a few feet away.

"Stabbed," he said, after he had run his hands over the woman's figure;
"died instantly--must have. Got her heart.--Young--not over twenty-five,
would you say?--Not dead long.--Anybody call a doctor?"

"I told Lally to stop by Dr. Garnet's house and send him--at once,"
Webster said, his voice low, and broken. "He's the coroner, too."

Hastings continued his examination. The brief pause that ensued was
broken by a woman's voice:

"Pauline! Pauline!"

The call came from one of the upstairs windows. Hearing it, a woman in
the servant group hurried into the house.

Webster groaned: "My God!"

"Frantic fiends! It gets worse and worse!" Sloane objected shrilly. "My
nerves! And Lucille's annoyed--shocked!"

He held the smelling bottle to his nose, breathing deeply.

"Here! Take this!" Hastings directed, and put up his hand abruptly.

Sloane had so gone to pieces that the movement frightened him. He
stepped back in such obvious terror that a hoarse guffaw of involuntary
ridicule escaped one of the servants. The detective, finding that his
kneeling posture made it difficult to put his handkerchief back into his
trousers pocket, had thrust it toward Sloane. That gentleman having so
suddenly removed himself out of reach, Hastings stuck the handkerchief
into Judge Wilton's coat-pocket.

Arthur Sloane, the detective said later, never forgave him that
unexpected wave of the handkerchief--and the servant's ridiculing laugh.

Hastings looked up to Wilton.

"Did you find any weapon?"

"I didn't look--didn't take time."

"Neither did I," young Webster added.

Hastings, disregarding the wet grass, was on his hands and knees,
searching. He accomplished a complete circuit of the body, his
round-shouldered, stooping figure making grotesque, elephantine shadows
under the light of the torch as he moved about slowly, not trusting his
eyes, but feeling with his hands every inch of the smallest, half-lit
spaces.

Nobody else took part in the search. Having accepted his leadership from
the outset, they seemed to take it for grante