“Never, sir.”
“Very well. Knock again, and then try the door. We will go with you.”
Something in the barrister’s manner rather than his words sent a cold shiver down the old butler’s spine.
“I do hope there’s nothing wrong, sir,” he commenced; but Bruce was already half-way up the stairs. Both he and White guessed what had happened. They knew that poor Thompson’s repeated summons at the bedroom door would remain forever unanswered—that the unfortunate baronet had quitted the dread certainties of this world for the uncertainties of the next.
They were not mistaken. A few minutes later they found him listlessly drooping over the side of the chair in which he was seated, partly undressed, and seemingly overcome at the moment when he was about to take off his boots.
On a table near him were two bottles, both half-emptied, and an empty wineglass. Each of the bottles bore the label of a well-known chemist. One was endorsed “Sleeping-draught,” the other “Poison,” and “Chloral.”
The three men were pale as the limp, inanimate form in the chair while they silently noted these details. Bruce raised the head of his friend in the hope that life might not yet be extinct. But Sir Charles Dyke had taken his measures effectually. Though the rigor mortis had not set in, he had evidently been dead some time.
Thompson, quite beside himself with grief, dropped to his knees by his master’s side.
“Sir Charles!” he wailed. “Sir Charles! For the love of Heaven, speak to us. You can’t be dead. Oh, you can’t. It ain’t fair. You’re too young to die. What curse has come upon the house that both should go?”
Bruce leaned over and shook the old butler firmly by the shoulder.