The two policemen held a short and hurried consultation, in very low tones. Then the sergeant entered the dining-room, and reappeared quickly.
“He’s all by himself. He takes it quite quiet,” said he.
The other man had already looked into the kitchen, and they now proceeded to search the shut-up drawing-room. Clifford heard them as they moved about—heard the noise of the piled-up furniture being displaced. And then, a moment later, one of the policemen ran up the stairs and passed Clifford as the latter hastily came down.
As he reached the foot of the staircase, Clifford, whom the man had saluted in silence, heard a sharp rap at the door of the closed room. Then the policeman who was upstairs called quickly to his companion downstairs:
“Bill, go outside and wait under the window. This side of the house—quick!”
The police-sergeant dashed out by the front door without a second’s delay, while the man who had given the direction burst open the bedroom door with a couple of blows of his truncheon. Clifford, in perplexity and alarm, rushed out after the sergeant. He arrived nearly as soon as the man he was following, whom he found groping among the evergreen bushes which grew thickly under the wall of the old house.
A succession of feeble moans, as of a weak creature in great agony, broke upon his ear as he turned the corner of the house.
And at the same moment he saw the constable who had burst open the bedroom door leaning out of the window of Miss Theodora’s room.
“What? She has not fallen—thrown herself—” stammered Clifford.
But even as he spoke, the sergeant parted the bushes with his arms, and turning the full light of the lantern he carried upon the ground beneath them, showed the little figure of poor Miss Theodora lying in a shapeless heap.