The few neighbors who remained had succeeded in bringing some sort of order out of the chaos that had greeted officers McCaleb and Clancy upon their arrival. The negro servants had been banished to their own quarters, where they were out of the way; all lights had been extinguished excepting the few needed, and the house was shrouded in the unbroken stillness which exists like a vacuum behind the swift turbulence following a sudden and tragic death.
The Captain was received with something of the awe that always greets a man of his profession when he first enters upon such a scene, when those who meet him are as far removed from the law's intricate machinery as were General Westbrook's friends and intimates. Old as it was, the neighborhood had never in the past sustained so rude and violent a shock to its calm respectability. Mr. Converse was now indeed the Captain, the god in the car.
An elderly gentleman, evidently a neighbor, met them at the door. He led the officers straight back through the wide and richly furnished hall, past the carved oaken stairway, which rose like an invitation to a multitude, to a lateral hall extending the width of the house. Here he turned to the left, and presently paused before a curtained door; a door so massive and solid that, together with the voluminous folds of the heavy velvet curtain which hung before it, it promised to afford an effective barrier to sounds arising within the room beyond, causing the sharpest of noises emanating therefrom to strike muffled and dead upon the ear of anybody in the hall.
Mr. Converse placed a restraining hand upon the arm outstretched to open the door.
"Just a moment, sir," said he. "Is Doctor Westbrook here?"
"No, sir; but efforts are being exerted to find him. It appears that he is in attendance upon some suburban patient."
"Who discovered the tragedy?"
"Miss Westbrook. She is completely prostrated, sir."
"Very good; now open the door."
The portal swung open and revealed, obviously, the household library. Save for the door, the windows, and the narrower spaces between the windows, its walls were entirely concealed by book-laden shelves; the apartment was otherwise scantily furnished.