a vague anxiety, he returned to the door he had just closed.
As he laid his hand upon it, a shot rang through the house--a cry--the
sound of a fierce voice--a fall.

And the next minute the door he held was violently burst open in his
face, he himself was knocked backward over a chair, and a man carrying a
gun, whose face was muffled in some dark material, rushed across the
room, leapt through the window, and disappeared into the night.

* * * * *

Faversham ran into the gallery. The first thing he saw was the Nattier
portrait lying on its face beside a chair overturned. Beyond it, a dark
object on the floor. At the same moment, he perceived Dixon standing
horror-struck, at the farther end of the gallery, with the handle of the
door leading to the servants' quarters still in his grasp. Then the old
man too ran.

The two men were brought up by the same obstacle. The body of Edmund
Melrose lay between them.

Melrose had fallen on his face. As Faversham and Dixon lifted him, they
saw that he was still breathing, though _in extremis_. He had been shot
through the breast, and a pool of blood lay beneath him, blotting out the
faded blues and yellow greens of a Persian carpet.

At the command of her husband, Mrs. Dixon, who had hurried after him, ran
for brandy, crying also for help. Faversham snatched a cushion, put it
under the dying man's head, and loosened his clothing. Melrose's eyelids
fluttered once or twice, then sank. With a low groan, a gush of blood
from the mouth, he passed away while Dixon prayed.

"May the Lord have mercy--mercy!"

The old man rocked to and fro beside the corpse in an anguish. Mrs. Dixon
coming with the brandy in her hand was stopped by a gesture from
Faversham.

"No use!" He touched Dixon on the shoulder. "Dixon--this is murder! You
must go at once for Doctor Undershaw and the police. Take the motor. Mrs.
Dixon and I will stay here. But first--tell me--after I spoke to you
here--did you go in to Mr. Melrose?"

"I knocked, sir. But he shouted to me--angry like--to go away--till he
rang. I went back to t' kitchen, and I had nobbut closed yon door behind
me--when I heard t' firin'. I brast it open again--an' saw a man--wi'
summat roun' his head--fleein' doon t' gallery. My God!--my God!--"

"The man who did it was in the gallery while you and I were speaking to
each other," said Faversham, calmly, as he rose; "and he got in through
my window, while I was