“Yes—why?”
“Let’s go and play it. It’ll pull us together a bit. After all, what is there more likely than that he’s gone for a long tramp? Or he might have changed his mind and gone to your place after all. In any case we can do nothing now but wait.”
A little comforted, Bruton led the way to the music-room.
“Play something, Dick: I’m too shaky,” he said.
So Cassels played some of the humane if rather turgid music of Schumann in which one may always find balm for the poisoned mind. The brooding sound brought them both consolation for a time, but at length Bruton’s mind wandered away from the music, and he began to tease and lacerate his spirit with horrible thoughts.
“Supposing he is lying dead in a cupboard somewhere,” something whispered to him, “or in a bath. He might have cut a vein and even at this moment be bleeding to death. Or he might have gone on to the roof.” Then, rising from his chair, he said, hurriedly:
“Dick—we must go and look for him—we must go and find him!”
At the first word Cassels’ fingers dropped lifeless on the keys.
“I was thinking the same thing myself,” he said. “We’ll do the ground-floor first.”
Slowly and in silence they went from one room to another, switching on the electric lights and looking in every place—likely and unlikely—which a man might have chosen to hide his own dead body in. The rooms, for the most part, were large and sparsely furnished, and a mere glance was in many cases sufficient to assure them that there, at least, no tragedy had been enacted. But in a narrow, long passage leading to the back premises, and in the back premises themselves, were many cupboards. These they opened one by one and, striking matches, peered inside.