“You will stay here?” he said. “You won’t follow us?”
“I shall stay here,” she answered. “Stop a minute—there’s one thing that should be thought of. My cousin Barthorpe——”
“Mr. Barthorpe Herapath has been sent for, miss—he’ll be here presently,” replied the inspector. “The caretaker’s telephoned to him. Now gentlemen.”
He led the way along a corridor to a room with which Selwood was familiar enough—an apartment of some size which Jacob Herapath used as a business office and kept sacred to himself and his secretary. When he was in it no one ever entered that room except at Herapath’s bidding; now there were strangers in it who had come there unbidden, and Herapath lay in their midst, silent for ever. They had laid the lifeless body on a couch, and Selwood and Mr. Tertius bent over it for a moment before they turned to the other men in the room. The dead face was calm enough; there was no trace of sudden fear on it, no signs of surprise or anger or violent passion.
“If you’ll look here, gentlemen,” said the police-inspector, motioning them towards the broad hearthrug. “This is how things were—nothing had been touched when we arrived. He was lying from there to here—he’d evidently slipped down and sideways out of that chair, and had fallen across the rug. The revolver was lying a few inches from his right hand. Here it is.”
He pulled open a drawer as he spoke and produced a revolver which he carefully handled as he showed it to Selwood and Mr. Tertius.
“Have either of you gentlemen ever seen that before?” he asked. “I mean—do you recognize it as having belonged to—him? You don’t? Never seen it before, either of you? Well, of course he might have kept a revolver in his private desk or in his safe, and nobody would have known. We shall have to make an exhaustive search and see if we can find any cartridges or anything. However, that’s what we found—and, as I said before, one chamber had been discharged. The doctor here says the revolver had been fired at close quarters.”
Mr. Tertius, who had watched and listened with marked attention, turned to the police surgeon.
“The wound may have been self-inflicted?” he asked.
“From the position of the body, and of the revolver, there is strong presumption that it was,” replied the doctor.