"You must find out what has become of my dear Maurice's body," she said, quietly.
"I promise you," replied Jen, with a look of stern determination in his face.
"And you will let me know?"
"I promise you," said Jen again. "Please go. Miss Dallas. There is no time to be lost, and you must not be found here."
Thus entreated, Isabella stepped out into the night, and in a moment or so she was swallowed up in the darkness with her companion. Left alone, the major closed the window, bolted and barred the shutters, and then hastened back to the death chamber, where he rang the bell. In a few minutes the footman, half-dressed and half-asleep, made his appearance; then came the policeman hastily from the kitchen; finally, as the bell still continued ringing, all the other servants, male and female, poured into the room. A single glance showed them what had occurred--the insensible Jaggard, the empty bed, the open window. A babel of voices ensued.
"Silence, all of you," cried Jen, authoritatively. "We must act, not talk. Two of you take Jaggard to his room. Tell the groom to ride at once to Deanminster for Dr. Etwald and Inspector Arkel. Sampson," he added, turning to the policeman, who was stolidly staring at the empty bed, "rouse yourself. Take lanterns and search for footmarks. There must have been more than one person to carry off a dead body."
These directions were obeyed at once. The house, the grounds, the whole wild night with its driving tempest became radiant with lights and alive with terrified men. That a human being should be murdered was sufficiently ghastly without this crowning horror of a missing body coming after. Every man looked on his fellow with suspicion; in the yellow light of the lanterns, dimly through the steady downpour of rain, could be seen pallid faces and scared expressions. And while the men folk scoured the house, the park, and the adjacent lanes environing "Ashantee," the female servants, unnerved and hysterical, crowded together in the kitchen, whispering over hastily prepared tea. It was a wild night, and full of the vague horrors of death and mystery.
Etwald came immediately from Deanminster in company with Arkel, whom this last extraordinary event took entirely by surprise. He questioned Sampson--the young policeman left in charge--he searched the chamber of death, stepped out of the window and across the lawn toward the belt of laurels which divided the lawn from a winding and tortuous lane. This, a tenebrous pathway even in the noonday, slipped eel-like through darkling trees to emerge into the high road a quarter of a mile away. Arkel was so long absent that Jen could only surmise that he had gone into this outward darkness, and on the inspector's return it appeared that the major was right in his conjecture. Furthermore Arkel brought back certain news.
"Without doubt the body was taken out through the window," he said to Jen. "The flower-bed beneath the lattice is trampled down. It was carried across the lawn--for I could see by the light of the lantern the footmarks of four feet--and through the bushes into the lane. The way can be traced easily enough to that point; but it is too dark to note any further sign."
"Nothing more can be done to-night," said Jen, gloomily. "The men have returned dead tired, but they have seen nothing and no one."