“Straight through the heart and lodged in the spine,” he said. “Death was absolutely instantaneous.”
The detective picked up the bullet and scrutinized it closely.
“Browning pistol ammunition,” observed Humphries; “it fits the gun he used. There’s half a dozen spare rounds in one of the drawers of his dressing-room upstairs.”
Mr. Manderton drew Inspector Humphries and Dr. Redstone into a corner of the room where they conversed in undertones. Bude and Jay had vanished. Dr. Romain turned to Robin Greve, who stood lost in a reverie, staring into the fire.
“A clear case of suicide,” he said. “The medical evidence is conclusive on that point. A most amazing affair. I can’t conceive what drove him to it. Why did he do it?”
“Ah! why?” said Robin.
CHAPTER X.
A SMOKING CHIMNEY
A Red sun glowed dully through a thin mist when, on the following morning, Robin Greve emerged from the side door into the gardens of Harkings. It was a still, mild day. Moisture from the night’s rain yet hung translucent on the black limbs of the bare trees and glistened like diamonds on the closely cropped turf of the lawn. In the air was a pleasant smell of damp earth.
Robin paused an instant outside the door in the library corridor and inhaled the morning air greedily. He had spent a restless, fitful night. His sleep had been haunted by the riddle which, since the previous evening, had cast its shadow over the pleasant house. The mystery of Hartley Parrish’s death obsessed him. If it was suicide,—and the doctors were both positive on the point—the motive eluded him utterly.
His mind, trained to logical processes of reasoning by his practice of the law, baulked at the theory. When he thought of Hartley Parrish as he had seen him at luncheon on the day before, striding with his quick, vigorous step into the room, boyishly curious to know what the chef was giving them to eat, devouring his lunch with obvious animal enjoyment, brimful of energy, dominating the table with his forceful, eager personality....