n't get an answer."

"Send the butler to me at once."

The maid disappeared, and in another moment the butler came hurriedly up
the stairs.

"Tufnell," said Musard quickly, "you must go at once to the village and
get Sergeant Lumbe and Dr. Holmes. Hurry off, and be as quick as you
can. And now, gentlemen," he added, turning to the others, "let us go
downstairs. While we are waiting for the police I will help you make
another search of the house and grounds. The murderer may escape while
we stand here talking. We have wasted too much valuable time already."

CHAPTER VI

The butler left the moat-house at a brisk pace which became almost a run
after he crossed the moat bridge. His way across the park lay along the
carriage drive, bordered by an avenue of tall trees, between an
ornamental lake and some thick game covers, and then through the outer
fields to the village.

It was a soft and mellow September night, with a violet sky overhead
sprinkled with silver. But a touch of autumn decay was in the air, which
was heavy and still, and a white mist was rising in thick, sluggish
clouds from the green, stagnant surface of the lake. The wood was veiled
in blackness, in which the trunks of the trees were just visible,
standing in straight, regular rows, like soldiers at attention.

Tufnell hurried along this lonely spot, casting timid glances around
him. He was not a nervous man at ordinary times, but like many country
people, he had a vein of superstition running through his phlegmatic
temperament, and the events of the night had swept away his calmness.
The croaking of the frogs and the whispering of the trees filled him
with uneasiness, and he kept glancing backwards and forwards from the
lake to the wood, as though he feared the murderer might suddenly appear
from the misty surface of the one or the dim recesses of the other.

He had almost reached the confines of the wood when he was startled by a
loud whirr, which he recognized as the flight of a covey of partridges
from a cover close at hand. What had startled them? Glancing fearfully
around him he saw, or thought he saw, the crouching figure of a man in
one of the bypaths of the wood, partly hidden by the thick branches
which stretched across the path a short distance from the drive.

Tufnell's first impulse was to take to his heels, but he was saved from
this ignominious act by the timely recollection that he was an
Englishman, whose glorious privilege