"If we only dared to do something," he muttered. "I suppose it is easy to guess what they have there?"
"Easy enough, indeed, sir," Field said between his teeth. "It's the body of Sir Charles Darryll. There is a deeper mystery here than we are as yet aware of. They are laying the body out on that table as if for some operation. I don't know what to think; I——"
"Shut that door," Sartoris commanded in a hard
high voice. "There is a deuce of a draught coming in from somewhere. You don't want that, eh, Bentwood!"
Bentwood muttered that it was the last thing he did desire. The door closed with a bang, there was a long silence, broken at last by a feeble cry of pain, a cry something like that of a child who suffers under some drug. Berrington leaped to his feet. As he would have crossed the hall a figure came along—the figure of a woman in a grey dress. It was the grey lady that Beatrice had seen on that fateful evening, the woman who had sat by the side of Mark Ventmore in the Paris theatre. She wrung her hands in silent grief.
"Oh, if only there was somebody to help me," she said. "If God would only give to me and send to me a friend at this moment, I would pray——"
Berrington stepped out into the light of the hall.
"Your prayer has been answered," he said quietly. "I am here to help you, Mary."