“Oh, it was suicide then? The—”
“Nobody seems to know what it was,” he rejoined. “I suppose later on I’ll have to sit on that question, too, in my capacity of coroner. Good-by. Don’t wait breakfast for me.”
He was gone. Presently through the open window his wife could hear the throaty wheeze of his car’s engine as the self-starter awakened it. Then there was a whirr and a rattle through the stillness, and the car was on its fast flight to Vailholme.
Dr. Lawton found the house glaringly lighted from end to end. The front door stood wide. So did the baize door which led back to the kitchen quarters. Through the latter issued the gabble and strident terror of mixed voices.
As the doctor came into the lower hall, Thaxton Vail emerged from the living room to meet him. Vail’s face was ghastly. Behind him was Miss Gregg.
The others of the party were grouped in unnatural postures in the living room, their chairs huddled close together as though their occupants felt subconscious yearning for mutual protection. Joshua Q. Mosely—mountainous in a yellow dustcoat that swathed his purple silk pajamas—was holding tight to the hand of his sniveling little wife. Doris was crouched low in a corner chair. Beside her sat Clive Creede trying awkwardly to calm the convulsive tremors which now and then shook her.
“Take me up there,” Dr. Lawton bade Vail. “You can tell me about it while I’m—”
He left the sentence unfinished and followed Thaxton up the stairs.
“We had a robbery at dinner time,” explained Vail as they went. “I was afraid the thieves might make a try, later, for more things than they could grab up at first. Foolish idea, I suppose. But anyhow I decided to spend the night downstairs. I let poor Chase have my room. Macduff, here, set up a most ungodly racket a few minutes ago. We followed him to my room and broke in. Chase was lying there in bed. You remember that big knife of mine—the one Clive Creede gave me? He had been stabbed with that. He— Here’s the room.”
As he stood aside for the doctor to pass in, another car rattled up to the porte-cochère.