nd called again and again to his
master, he could get no answer. Alarmed, he aroused the entire
household; but despite the fact that a dozen persons endeavoured to
get word from the man within, not so much as a whisper rewarded
them. The bolt was still 'shot,' the bar still on, the key still
turned on the inner side of the door, so they could force no entry
to the place; and it was never until the village blacksmith had
been called in and his sledge had battered down the age-weakened
masonry in which that door was set that any man knew for certain
what that burning light and that unbroken silence portended. When,
however, they finally got into the place there lay the once famous
inventor at full length on the oaken floor close to the barred
door, as dead as George Washington, and with never a sign of what
killed him either on the body or in any part of the place. Yet
the first look at his distorted features was sufficient to prove
that he had died in agony, and the position of the corpse showed
clearly that when the end came he was endeavouring to get to the
door."

"Heart failure, possibly," said Cleek.

"Not a hope of it," replied Narkom. "A doctor was sent for
immediately; fortunately one of the most famous surgeons in England
happened to be in the neighbourhood at the time--called down from
town to perform an operation. He is willing, so young Mr. Drake
tells me, to stake his professional reputation that the man's
heart was as sound as a guinea; that he had not imbibed one drop
of anything poisonous; that he had not been asphyxiated, as, of
course, he couldn't have been, for the bowman's slits in the wall
gave free ventilation to the place, if nothing more; that he had
not been shot, stabbed, or bludgeoned, but, nevertheless, he had
died by violence, and that violence was not, and could not be,
attributed to suicide, for there was everything to prove to the
contrary. In short, that whatever had attacked him had done so
unexpectedly and while he was busy at his work-table, for there
was the chair lying on its back before it, just as it had fallen
over when he jumped up from his seat, and there on the 'working plan'
he was drawing up was the pen lying on a blob of India ink, just
as it had dropped from his hand when he was stricken. Some
murderous force had entered that room, and passed out of it
again, leaving the door barred, bolted, and locked upon the
inside. Some weapon had been used, and yet no weapon was th