"Extraordinary!" he muttered. "He couldn't have known. It must have been instinctive."
"Instincts are like that," I said. "I don't suppose an animal knows anything about death, or even thinks of it, yet it behaves from the very first as if it knew. It's odd."
A door opened at the far end of the hall, and Symington-Tearle emerged. There was a patch of coal-dust on his forehead. His hair, usually so flat and smooth that it seemed like a brass mirror, was now disordered.
"Has he gone?" he enquired hoarsely.
We nodded. I pointed to the chain on the door.
"It's bolted," I said. "Come into the study."
I led the way into the room. Tearle walked to the window, then to a chair, and finally took up a position before the fire.
"This is extraordinary!" he exclaimed.
"What do you make of it?" I asked.
"I can make nothing of it. What's the matter with me? I never felt anything like that terror that came over me when Ballard approached me."