uttered an extraordinary exclamation. He was instantly
galvanized into a condition of seething energy. With what was almost a
snarl, he brushed the financier aside, and reached the white mangled
form on the ground.

For a tense minute he knelt beside it. The others waited.

"Destroyed," they heard him mutter--"utterly destroyed...."

When he rose, his eyes were full of tears.

"It is terrible. Who was with her last?"

"I was with her less than a quarter of an hour ago," Tranter replied.
"She said she was going back to the house, and asked me to find Mr.
Copplestone, and tell him that she was not feeling well."

"Where are your police?" asked Monsieur Dupont.

"Gluckstein is going to take the ladies back to the house, and telephone
for them," the manager returned.

The financier departed with his charges. The four men remained, facing
each other over the dead body. Rain was falling heavily.

"Poor girl," said the clergyman huskily.

"That such a brute should be at large," the manager added.

Copplestone's gaze again became rivetted to the ground. He seemed
unconscious of their presence. He was like a man alone and dazed in a
strange world.

Then the storm burst over them with all its fury. The rain poured down
in torrents, the lightning was incessant. It was as if the elements
themselves, in their rage, were seeking to complete the work of
destruction.

"We can't leave her out in this--police or no police," the clergyman
shivered.

Copplestone bent down again. The manager moved to assist, but Tranter
put him aside, and assisted Copplestone to lift the ghastly burden in
his arms. Then they picked their way slowly along the winding paths to
the house.

When they entered the decorated room, Copplestone's strange immobility
flashed upon him with startling suddenness. Uttering a oath, he placed
what he had previously been carrying with dull indifference roughly on a
couch, and hurled himself furiously upon the confusion of decorations,
tearing and crushing everything into a smashed heap on the floor. So
overwhelming was his violence that no one dared attempt to stop him. He
dashed the lights to the ground, and rent the flags with appalling
ferocity. In a few moments a shattered pile was all that remained of the
medley of illumination. He stood on the pile and ground his heels into
it.

Then all the energy was snuffed out of him like the switching off of an
electric current. The dull heavy cloud descended