As he entered his rooms Sunday evening about seven, he found a telegram and a telephone notice from the hotel office. The latter merely informed him that Berrien, Connecticut, had called him at four o'clock. The telegram read:
"For Heaven's sake come up here at once. Aunt Ursula is dead."
It was signed Iris, and Bannard read it, standing by the window to catch the gleams of fading daylight. Then he sank into a chair, and read it over again, though he now knew it by rote.
He was not at all stunned. His alert mind traveled quickly from one thought to another, and for ten minutes his tense, strained position, his set jaw and his occasionally winking eyes betokened successive cogitations on matters of vital importance.
Then he jumped up, looked at his watch, consulted a time-table, and, not waiting for an elevator, ran down the stairs through that atmosphere of Sunday afternoon quiet, which is perhaps nowhere more noticeable than in a city hotel.
A taxicab, a barely caught train, and before nine o'clock Winston Bannard was at the Berrien railroad station.
Campbell was there to meet him, and as they drove to the house Bannard sat beside the chauffeur that he might learn details of the tragedy.
"But I don't understand, Campbell," Bannard said, "how could she be murdered, alone in her room, with the door locked? Did she—didn't she—kill herself?"
But the chauffeur was close-mouthed. "I don't know, Mr. Bannard," he returned, "it's all mighty queer, and the detective told me not to gossip or chatter about it at all."
"But, my stars! man, it isn't gossip to tell me all there is to tell."