"I'm looking!" replied Gatton grimly.
Grasped rigidly in his left hand the fallen man held the telephone!
"We want gas-masks for this job," said the Inspector.
His words were true enough. I had already recognized the odor of the foul stuff. It was identical with that which, as we had come down from the upper floor of the Abbey Inn, had proceeded from the room wherein the mysterious shell had exploded. In a word my cottage was filled with some kind of poison-gas!
"We must risk it, anyway," said Gatton, "and find out who it is."
I nodded, sick with foreboding. Stooping swiftly, he succeeded in turning over the prone figure, whereupon I quite failed to restrain a hoarse cry of horror....
It was Eric Coverly!
The fume-laden room seemed to swim around me as I looked down at the dreadfully contorted features over which was creeping that greenish tint which had characterized the face of Sir Marcus as I had seen it on the morning of the body's recovery from the hold of the Oritoga.
"Drag him out," said Gatton huskily; "he may be alive."
But even as we bent to the attempt, both my companion and I were seized with violent nausea; for the wisps of gray mist which still floated in the air were nevertheless sufficiently deadly. However, we succeeded at last in dragging Eric Coverly into the passage. Here it became necessary to detach the telephone from the death-grip in which he held it.