“I came at once, madam; is your son in his room?”
“Yes, yes—dead by this time. Pray, come up.”
He sprang up the stairs in a very unprofessional way, forgetting the necessity for a medical man being perfectly calm and cool, and Wilton met him on the landing.
“Oh, here you are. Haven’t got the door open yet. Curse the old wood! It’s like iron. Maria, go and get all the keys you can find.”
“Yes, dear, but while the men are doing that hadn’t we better try and get poor Claud’s door open?”
“No, hers first,” cried Wilton, and Leigh started.
“I understood that it was your son who needed help,” he said.
“Never mind him for a bit. You must see to my niece first;” and in a few seconds Leigh was in possession of the fact that the maid had been unable to make her mistress hear; that since then they could get no response to constant calling and knocking, and the door had resisted all their efforts to get it open.
On reaching the end of the corridor Leigh found the maid, white and trembling, holding her apron pressed hard to her lips, while the footman and two gardeners, after littering the floor with unnecessary tools, were now trying to make a hole with a chisel large enough to admit the point of a saw, so as to cut round the lock.
“Wood’s like iron, sir,” said the gardener, who was operating.