Manley was much quicker than usual making his toilet, but thorough.
He foresaw a hard and trying day before him, and he wished to start it
fresh and clean. He would come into contact with new people; he saw
himself playing an important role in a most important affair; he would
naturally and as usual make himself valued. A slovenly air did not
conduce to that. It seemed fitting to put on his darkest tweed suit and a
black necktie.

When he came--briskly for him--downstairs he found a group of women
servants in the hall, outside the door of the smoking-room, three of them
snivelling, and Wilkins and Holloway in the smoking-room itself, standing
and staring with a wholly helpless air at the body of Lord Loudwater,
huddled in the easy chair in which he had been wont to sleep after dinner
every evening.

"He's been stabbed, sir. There's that knife which was in the inkstand on
the library table stickin' in 'is 'eart," said Wilkins in a dismal voice.

Mr. Manley glanced at the dead man. He looked to have been stabbed as he
slept. His body had sagged down in the chair, and his head was sunk
between his shoulders, so that he appeared almost neckless. His once so
florid face was of an even, dead, yellowish pallor.

Mr. Manley's glance at the dead man was brief. Then he saw that the door
between the smoking-room and the library was ajar. He could not see the
library windows without crossing the smoking-room. That he would not do.
He was a stickler for correctness in all matters, and he knew that the
scene of a crime must be left untrampled.

He turned and said: "We will leave everything just as it is till the
police come. And telephone at once to Doctor Thornhill, and ask him to
come. If he is out, tell them to get word to him, Wilkins."

Wilkins and Holloway filed out of the room before him; he followed them
out, locked the door and put the key in his pocket. Then he opened the
door from the hall into the library. The long window nearest the
smoking-room door was open.

The group of servants were all watching him; never had he moved or
acted with an air of graver or greater importance. His portliness gave
it weight.

"Has any of you opened the windows of the library this morning?" he said.

No one answered.

Then Mrs. Carruthers, the housekeeper, said: "Clarke does the library
every morning. Have you done it this morning, Clarke?"

"No, mum. I hadn't finished the green droring-room when Mr. Holloway
brought the sad n