“Neither, sir. I sent it to the telegraph office under seal.”
“Very good,” said Nick approvingly. “Be equally guarded in the future, or till I further advise you. This must be all for the present, Miss Royal, as I wish to make a few investigations outside. I will leave by the front door and pass around the house, that our interview here may not be suspected.”
“But how am I to repay you, or thank you for——”
“By following my instructions to the letter,” Nick gently interposed, as he led the troubled girl into the hall. “Keep them constantly in mind and trust me to be constantly alert to your interests. No more now, Miss Royal. You shall hear from me later.”
The last was said at the open door, and with the final word Nick nodded and smiled encouragingly, then left the veranda and quickly made his way around the house.
The interview had occupied but a very few minutes, and as Nick approached the group of men gathered near Kendall’s body, the physician was just about concluding his examination of the remains.
With a few rapid glances Nick took in the superficial evidence bearing upon the crime. The body lay upon the greensward to the right of a gravel walk leading around the house, and nearly midway between the walk and the library windows. The plot of grass between the walk and the house was about ten feet wide, and Nick promptly deduced one important point.
“There is no door on this side of the house, nor any direct approach to one from either gate,” he quickly reasoned. “Evidently Kendall came around here to peer through the library window before entering the house, and was struck down as he approached, or while quietly withdrawing. For some reason he must have aimed to learn who was within.”
A glance at the gravel walk and the greensward near-by, however, gave Nick no clue. If Kendall’s assailant had left any telltale footprints behind him, both his own and those that might have revealed the movements of his victim had been obliterated by the heavy tread of the several men gathered about the murdered man.
The body evidently lay where it had fallen, with arms outstretched and face upturned, gory and ghastly in the morning sunlight. The skull had been fractured by several blows with a heavy weapon, obviously a bludgeon of some kind, and from the shocking wounds the blood had oozed over the brow and hair of the stricken man, forming a sickening pool in the matted grass on which his head rested.