He races up the stairs. He finds her standing outside the door of a bedroom.
“I can’t get in,” she says hurriedly. “I’ve called, but there is no reply. Oh, Estcourt! do you think he is in there?”
He makes no reply, but runs downstairs. In a few minutes he is back with a hatchet. Curious servants are following him.
“Stand back,” he says to Flora. She obeys, and the young man brings the hatchet with tremendous force against the lock. Three, four, five strokes, and he has broken it to shivers. Then he opens the door.
Sir Reginald Desmond is seated at his writing table. His left hand is beneath his chest, his head is resting on the table above it, his right is outstretched and hanging over the side. Just below it on the floor lies a revolver, and drip, drip, drip, dripping on to the chair on which he sits, is a stream of running blood. Who shall judge him as he lays there silent, and fast stiffening? for—
“He is dead, and blame and praise fall on his ear alike, now hushed in death.”
Those may do so who can. I cannot.
CHAPTER VII.
“Were you in the Commons last night? Did you go to hear Hector D’Estrange?”