“Shut up, you fool!” he exclaimed. “You can’t do any good making a noise like that.”
“She said she saw the door handle turn,” Lenora sobbed. “I went to fetch Macdougal. He’d gone out. When I came back she was there—like that!”
“What door handle?” the manager asked.
Lenora pointed. The young man crossed the room. The lock was still in its place, the door refused to yield. As he turned around the doctor arrived. He hurried at once to Ella’s side.
“Hands still warm,” he muttered, as he felt them…. “My God! It’s the double knot strangle!”
He bent over Ella for several moments. Then he rose to his feet. The door from outside had been opened once more. A police inspector, followed by a detective, had entered.
“This is your affair, gentlemen, not mine,” the doctor said gravely. “The young lady is dead. She has been cruelly strangled within the last five or ten minutes.”
The Inspector turned around.
“Lock the outside door,” he ordered his man. “Has any one left the room, Mr. Marsham?”
“No one,” the manager declared.