“You go, then, Thomas,” said Jane; “and make haste, there’s a good man. He must be anxious to know.”
“Shouldn’t think he was,” said Thomas, “when Missus Elstree knocked ever so long at the libery and got no answer.”
Jane’s sharp eyes were again directed from one to the other, and then, without further pause, she set her teeth, nipped her lips together, and hurried across the hall to the library door.
She knocked at first softly, but there was no reply; then more loudly, with the same result; and at last, thoroughly alarmed, she beat fiercely upon the panels, calling loudly upon her masters name.
“Go and fetch Mr Elstree, and call up Dr Challen,” said Jane, huskily, for there was a horrible fear at her heart, though she resolutely kept it to herself. “Perhaps master may be in a fit,” she whispered.
The Rector was there in a few minutes, and after knocking and calling, he, too, turned pale, as the doctor now appeared upon the scene.
“Locked on the inside,” said the latter, after a momentary examination. “The door must be broken open, and at once. Is there a carpenter upon the premises?”
There was no carpenter, but one of the gardeners had some skill in doing odd jobs about the place, and he was known to possess a basket of tools. His name was therefore suggested.
“Fetch him at once!” exclaimed the Doctor, as excited now as any one present; and amidst an awe-stricken silence, the gardener’s advent was awaited.
But it took a good quarter of an hour to seek Alexander McCray, and during that period of breathless expectation, not a soul present thought of the possibility of an entrance being effected by the window. Thomas had peered twice through the key-hole, looking round afterwards with a pale, blank face, when seeing that it would probably be a quicker way of obtaining information than questioning, Dr Challen knelt down himself, to peer for some time through the narrow aperture, when he, too, rose, thoughtful and silent, the Rector refraining from questioning him, and no one else daring to do so. What Thomas had seen he at length communicated in whispers, but they did not reach the Rector, who, with a shuddering sensation oppressing him, kept on, in spite of himself, watching—as if his eyes were specially there attracted—the narrow slit beneath the door, as if expecting that some trace might probably there show itself of what had taken place within the room.