y removed, then, as
soon as possible----"

"Not till Webb gets here!" Potter broke out, twisting his hands
convulsively, "wait for Webb. I insist on Webb!"

The doctor stared.

"Mr. Potter, I believe?" he inquired courteously. Then turning to the
others generally, "Do I understand that there is any reason----"

"No reason at all," Dupont interrupted irritably, "not the least. Webb
will be informed, fast enough. If you are kind enough, doctor----"

It was obvious that he dreaded the chance of any personal
responsibility. What a rabbit of a man he was! Weldon remembered
suddenly that a night watchman had been dismissed for saying that Mrs.
Dupont blew her husband's nose for him! One could almost believe it.
Hear him, now.

"Mr. Fayles will, I am sure, agree with me----"

"With you? With _you_?"

Mr. Fayles's voice was hollow, tortured. His face was wet. He turned
his red-rimmed eyes on the man before him.

"What in God's name are you?" he said ferociously. "Wait for Webb, of
course."

His head went back in his hands and they stared at one another.
Fayles, the cold aristocrat. Fayles, the unruffled! The doctor's
glance settled finally on Weldon, as a possible clew to the situation.

"This is--this is--we make every allowance, of course," he began, "for
such an unsettling occurrence. Of course. Mr. Webb, of course, would
naturally ... and yet I hardly like the idea ... it seems..."

There was a strange sense of tension in the room, not to be accounted
for by that dead creature on the floor. No, there was something else.
Weldon with difficulty repressed a smile. That fool of a
brother-in-law knew nothing, clearly. Potter was merely irritable and
at sea generally, he was sure. He could swear that whatever alarmed
Potter alarmed him only through Fayles, whose collapse was
unprecedented. Did Fayles know? Impossible. Fayles stood for
old-fashioned, delicate scruples, finical standards. "As straight as
Joseph Fayles," they said. And yet, why.... He remembered that he had
not yet answered the doctor. How his thoughts ran away with him!

"Mr. Webb's connection, of course," he murmured, "principal director,
you might say, made it natural to lean on him ... to depend ...
undoubtedly he would have been notified. Probably if the doctor were
to send for the body, Mr. Webb would have got there before, and his
colleagues be satisfied. They depended on his judgment to such an
extent..."

The a