There was no answer.
Ferrie tried the door of the house, and found it barred on the inside. He signified to his men that they were to fetch one of the heavy poles from the corral. Using it as a battering-ram, after two or three blows, the door burst in. Ferrie and Conacher entered the house together.
They found Gault sitting upright in the kitchen in one of Blackburn’s carved chairs. For one dreadful instant they thought that he was laughing at them; in the next they perceived that he was dead. His wide-open eyes were bereft of all sense; his lower jaw was hanging down in a dreadful, idiotic grimace. Yet he sat as straight in the high-backed chair as in life. It was only upon looking closer that they discovered that the man with a strange, last impulse of vanity had tied himself into the chair, that he might be discovered facing his enemies in an upright position. There was a band of canvas around his chest! and another around his forehead; the broad-brimmed Stetson was jammed rakishly down on his head over the band. He had then shot himself through the heart with a revolver, which had slipped from his hand to the floor.
The young men jerked their hats off; and their grim faces softened a little.
“Well, he’s paid,” said Conacher. “We can’t feel any more hard feelings against him!”
“It’s better so,” said Ferrie. “Nobody would want this ugly case advertised by a trial.”
Such was Andrew Gault’s requiem.
They returned outside the house, hat in hand, and all the others knew at a glance what they had found.
If Gault in his strange preparations for death had hoped to leave upon Loseis a last impression of his power, his aim was not realized. She betrayed no wish to look at him again. Loseis’ verdict was more merciful than the young men’s.
“So he is dead!” she murmured, clinging to Conacher’s arm. “He would kill himself, of course. . . . Poor fellow! He had never known love when he was young. When he was old love mocked him, and it drove him mad. . . . Ah! how lucky we are, my dearest dear!”