"Pretty soon, however, we came upon him in a downstairs room—sure enough dead, Captain Converse, with a knife sticking in him. I left Mike there to keep the crowd out, and after 'phoning to headquarters from a neighbor's, I hurried in myself to make sure."
Not until the young man had finished did Converse vouchsafe a question.
"A knife, you say?" he mused, the words being hardly so much an interrogation as an expression of the importance he seemed to attach to the circumstance. "A knife?"
"Yes, sir. But I neglected to say there was a revolver lying on the floor. I didn't have time to see much; but it was out in pretty plain view, lying close to the General."
"His, likely. But wait till we get there," said Mr. Converse; then, as an afterthought, "Who else was at the house?"
"I saw no one, sir,—that is, before the neighbors arrived."
"Doctor Westbrook?"
"No, sir."
Shortly the conveyance was grinding over the gravelled driveway which led from the street to the porte-cochère.
The house itself was a commodious colonial mansion, possessing the familiar, massive-pillared Greek front. Setting in the midst of a wide expanse of beautiful park, shaded by magnolia, catalpa, and numerous oak and elm trees, it was merely a variation, in details alone, of a uniform style of architecture at once simple and imposing, which lent to the neighborhood an air of distinction and aloofness, and imparted that genuine spirit of the old Southern home which is both impressive and incapable of imitation.