't it, Headland? Well, hadn't he
better take 'em downstairs and give 'em a stiff whisky-and-soda? I expect
the poor beggars have need of it."

Cleek held up a silencing hand.

"No," he said, firmly. "Not just yet, I think. They may be needed for
evidence when the constable comes. Now...." He crossed over to where the
bodies lay, and gently removed the covering. Merriton went suddenly
white, while the doctor, more used to such sights, bit his lips and laid
a steadying hand upon the younger man's arm.

"My God!" cried Sir Nigel, despairingly. "How did they meet their death?"

Cleek reached down a finger and gently touched a blackened spot upon
Wynne's temple.

"Shot through the head, and the bullet penetrated the brain," he said,
quietly. "Small-calibre revolver, too. There's your Frozen Flame for you,
my friend!"

But he was hardly prepared for the event that followed. For at this
statement, Merriton threw a hand out suddenly, as though warding off a
blow, took a step forward and peered at that which had once been his
friend--and enemy--and then gave out a strangled cry.

"Shot through the head!" he fairly shrieked, as Borkins came quietly into
the room, and stopped short at the sound of his master's voice. "I tell
you it's impossible--_impossible_! It wasn't my shot, Mr. Headland--it
couldn't have been!"

CHAPTER XV

A STARTLING DISCLOSURE

Cleek took a sudden step forward.

"What's that? What's that?" he rapped out, sharply. "_Your_ shot, Sir
Nigel? This is something I haven't heard of before, and it's likely to
cause trouble. Explain, please!"

But Merriton was past explaining anything just then. For he had bowed his
head in his hands and was sobbing in great, heart-wrung sobs with Doctor
Bartholomew's arms about him, sobs that told of the nerve-strain which
gave them birth, that told of the tenseness under which he had lived
these last weeks. And now the thread had snapped, and all the broken,
jangling nerves of the man had been loosed and torn his control to atoms.

The doctor shook him gently, but with firm fingers.

"Don't be a fool, boy--don't be a fool!" he said over and over again,
as he waved the other away, and, taking out a little phial from his
waistcoat pocket, dropped a dose from it into a wine-glass and forced it
between the man's lips. "Don't make an ass of yourself, Nigel. The shot
you fired was nothing--the mere whim of a man, whose brain had been fired
by champagne and who w