Joseph shuddered, and covered his eyes with his hand. "No, no, I cannot!"
"Well, you can have a try, can't you, sir?" said Hemingway, as one humouring a child. "After all, it only happened yesterday."
Joseph let his hand fall. "Only - yesterday! Is it possible? Yet it seems as though a lifetime had passed between then and now!"
"You can take it from me that it hasn't," said Hemingway, somewhat tartly. "Now, when you went upstairs to call your brother down to dinner, you found his valet outside the room, didn't you?"
"Yes. It was he who gave me the first premonition that something was wrong. He told me that he could get no answer to his knocking, that the door was locked. I remember that so distinctly - so appallingly distinctly!"
"And what did you do then?"
Joseph sat down on a chair, and rested one elbow on the table. "What did I do? I tried the door, I called to my brother. There was no answer. I was alarmed. Oh, I had no suspicion of the dreadful truth! I thought he had been taken ill, fainted, perhaps. I called to Stephen."
"Why did you want him particularly, sir?"
Joseph made one of his little vague gestures. "I don't know. Instinctively one wishes for support. I knew too that my strength would not avail to break down the door. He and Ford burst open the lock, and I saw my poor brother, lying on the floor, as though asleep."
"What happened next, sir?"