"In the study, sir."
Mr. Forde crossed the hall and turned the handle of the door, but the door was locked.
"Have you the key?" he asked. "Yes, sir," answered Williams, fumbling in his pocket nervously—the fact being that, notwithstanding his large experience of the world and knowledge of society, he had never before come in contact with any one who did not consider it necessary at all events, to assume a certain sympathy with misfortune, and it is no exaggeration to say Mr. Forde's utter callousness frightened the man.
He had never previously seen a human being whose intense thought for self swallowed up every thought for other people; to whom the death or ruin of any number of his fellow-creatures was simply a bagatelle when compared with any misfortune which could touch himself.
"If you cannot unlock the door, let me do it," remarked Mr. Forde, taking the key out of Williams' fingers, and shooting back the bolt with a quick sharp click; with a steady determined step he crossed the room.
"Raise that blind," he said.
Williams hesitated, but then obeyed, and at the same moment Mr. Forde drew aside, with no faltering or gentle touch, the handkerchief which covered the dead man's face.
There he lay, as he had died. There was no sneer curling the lip now, no scowl disfiguring the forehead. There was no expression of despair, no look of anguish. Death was fast smoothing the hard lines out of that dark face; and as Mr. Forde realized all this—realized there was no deception about the matter—that no insult could reach his sense, no dread affect him more, he could have cursed the man who long and long before had told him if ever misfortune came upon him he should know how to meet it. This was how he had met it; this was what he had in his mind then. Mr. Forde understood perfectly that when once he found the battle going against him, when once he found the tide setting too strongly for him to resist its flow, he had always meant to end the difficulty thus.
"Yes, he is dead sure enough," commented Mr. Forde at length. "He has taken precious good care to leave other people in the lurch as any one who ever knew Henry Werner might safely have sworn he would do."
"I do not quite understand, sir," said the butler deprecatingly.