He spoke quietly, but in the tone of a man used to command.
"But, for anything we know, his lordship may still be alive," said Dr. Thornhill in a somewhat blustering tone, and pushing forward. "As his medical adviser, it's my duty to make sure at once."
"I'll tell you whether Lord Loudwater is alive or not. Don't let any one cross the threshold, Perkins," said Mr. Flexen, with quiet decision.
Perkins laid a hand on the doctor's arm, and the doctor said: "A nice way of doing things! Arbuthnot would have given his first attention to his lordship!"
"I'm going to," said Mr. Flexen quietly.
He went to the dead man, looked in his pale face, lifted his hand, let it fall, and said: "Been dead hours."
Then he examined carefully the position of the knife. He was more than a minute over it. Then he drew it gingerly from the wound by the ring at the end of it. It was one of these Swedish knives, the blades of which are slipped into the handle when they are not being used.
"I think that's the knife that lay, open, in the big ink-stand in the library. We used it as a paper-knife, and to cut string with," said Mr. Manley, who was watching him with most careful attention.
"It may have some evidence on the handle," said Mr. Flexen, still holding it by the ring, and he drove the point of it into the pad of blotting paper on which Mr. Manley had been wont to write letters at the murdered man's dictation.
"And how am I to tell whether the wound was self-inflicted, or not?" cried the doctor in an aggrieved tone.