here was no chance for further talk, for by this time Sartoris had
released the straps of the packing case and raised the lid. The others
stood around him, looking white and anxious, with the exception of
Bentwood, who was smoking a cigarette quite carelessly. With an
impatient gesture, Sartoris pointed to the case by his side.

"Now, then," he said curtly, "are you people going to keep me waiting
all night? Do you think that a cripple like me can do everything? Give a
hand here, you men, whilst one of the others clears the table. Pull the
cloth off."

There was a clatter of china and glass and a clink of bottles, at the
sound of which Bentwood looked around with a sudden spasmodic grin on
his face. But Sartoris scowled at him furiously, and he turned his
watery gaze in another direction. The table was clear now, and the
Rajah, with the help of the man called Reggie, and Richford, raised some
inanimate object from the trunk. It was limp and heavy, it was swathed
in sheets, like a lay figure or a mummy. As the strange thing was opened
out it took the outlines of a human body, a dread object, full of the
suggestion of crime and murder and violence. Berrington breathed hard as
he watched.

"If we only dared to do something," he muttered. "I suppose it is easy
to guess what they have there?"

"Easy enough, indeed, sir," Field said between his teeth. "It's the body
of Sir Charles Darryll. There is a deeper mystery here than we are as
yet aware of. They are laying the body out on that table as if for some
operation. I don't know what to think; I----"

"Shut that door," Sartoris commanded in a hard high voice. "There is a
deuce of a draught coming in from somewhere. You don't want that, eh,
Bentwood!"

Bentwood muttered that it was the last thing he did desire. The door
closed with a bang, there was a long silence, broken at last by a feeble
cry of pain, a cry something like that of a child who suffers under some
drug. Berrington leaped to his feet. As he would have crossed the hall a
figure came along--the figure of a woman in a grey dress. It was the
grey lady that Beatrice had seen on that fateful evening, the woman who
had sat by the side of Mark Ventmore in the Paris theatre. She wrung her
hands in silent grief.

"Oh, if only there was somebody to help me," she said. "If God would
only give to me and send to me a friend at this moment, I would
pray----"

Berrington stepped out into the light of the hall.

"You