“Gone!” said Freyberger.
“The bed had not been slept in,” replied the other.
“Before proceeding further I will go up and see the body,” said the detective. Raymond led the way, and Freyberger followed him to the fatal bedroom; bending over the body was a tall, clean-shaved man.
“Dr Murrell,” said Raymond.
The doctor rose to his full height, and exposed what he had been bending over. It was a sight that gave even Freyberger a thrill.
He introduced himself. “I can’t find a trace of injury,” said the police surgeon.
“What do you think he died of?”
“Fright,” replied Dr Murrell. “Most possibly he had a weak heart, we will see at the autopsy; but it was fright that killed him—look at his face.”
Now Freyberger was a junior man at the Yard. He recognized at once that this case was no ordinary case of a man being found dead. The position of Gyde, his great place in the world, his absence, and the extraordinary death of his valet, conspired to make it an affair of the first importance.
A weak man might have sent for assistance, but he was not a weak man by any manner of means, and as he stood looking at the object on the floor, it seemed to him that he could hear the waters of that flood that leads on to fortune.