"Hush!" Luttrell called sharply for silence, and a moment afterwards, a loud shrill scream rent the air like lightning.
Miranda cowered from it.
"Jenny Prask!" said Hillyard.
"Then—then—the news is true," faltered Miranda, and she would have fallen but for the arm of her husband about her waist.
They waited until Sir Chichester came down the stairs to them. He was shaken and trembling. He, the spectator of dramas, was now a character in one most tragically enacted under his own roof.
"The report is true to the letter," he said in a low voice. "Dennis, will you go for McKerrel, the doctor. You know his house in Midhurst. Will you take your car, and bring him back. There is nothing more that we can do until he comes." He stood for a little while by the table in the hall, staring down at it, and taking particular note of its grain.
"A curious thing," he said. "The key of her room is missing altogether."
To no one did it come at this moment that the disappearance of the key was to prove a point of vast importance. No one made any comment, and Sir Chichester fell to silence again. "She looked like a child sleeping," he said at length, "a child without a care."
Then he sat down and took the newspaper from his pocket. Mr. Albany Todd suddenly advanced to Harry Luttrell. He had been no less observant than Martin Hillyard.
"You alone, Colonel Luttrell," he said, "were not surprised."