r. Pendleton's timorous and inferior mind was incapable of
translating the command into action. He could only stare dumbly before
him.

"No, no! Let me stay, I will be calm," Mrs. Pendleton pleaded. "Is--is he
dead, doctor?"

Dr. Ravenshaw crossed to the centre of the room and bent over the body,
feeling the heart. Husband and wife watched him, huddled together, their
white faces framed in the shadow of the doorway. In a moment he was on his
feet again, advancing towards them. "We can do no good here, Mrs.
Pendleton," he said gently. "Your brother is dead."

"Dead? Robert dead!" Her startled eye sought his averted face, and her
feminine intuition gathered that which he was seeking to withhold. "Do you
mean that he has been killed?" she whimpered.

"I fear that there has been--an accident," he replied evasively. He stood
in front of them in a way which obscured their view of the prone figure,
and a small shining thing lying alongside, which he alone had seen.
"Come," he said, in a professional manner, taking her by the arm. "Let me
take you downstairs." He got her away from the threshold, and pulled the
broken door to, shutting out the spectacle within.

"Are you going to leave him there--like that?" whispered Mrs. Pendleton.

"It is necessary, till the police have seen him," he assured her. "We had
better send Thalassa in the car to the churchtown. Go for Sergeant
Pengowan, Thalassa, and tell him to come at once. And afterwards you had
better call at Mr. Austin Turold's lodgings and tell him and his son.
Hurry away with you, my man. Don't lose a moment!"

Thalassa hastened along the passage as though glad to get away. His heavy
boots clattered down the staircase and along the empty hall. Then the
front door banged with a crash.

The others followed more slowly, stepping gently in the presence of Death,
past the little lamps, hardly bigger than fireflies, which flickered
feebly in their alcoves. They went into the front room, where a table lamp
gave forth a subdued light. Mrs. Pendleton turned up the wick and sank
into a chair, covering her face with her hands.

It was the room where only that afternoon Robert Turold had unfolded the
history of his life's quest: a large gloomy room with heavy old furniture,
faded prints of the Cornish coast, and a whitefaced clock on the
mantel-piece with a loud clucking tick. Dr. Ravenshaw knew the room well,
but Robert Turold's sister had seen it for the first time that day, a