table, his eyes gleaming with an almost fiendish excitement; then the
gleam faded, and he turned back to the girl.

Godfrey cast one astonished glance at him and strode to the chair. I
saw his face quiver with sudden horror, I saw him catch at the table
for support, and for an instant he stood staring down. Then he turned
stiffly toward me and motioned me to approach.

In the chair a man sat huddled forward--a grey-haired man, clad in a
white robe. His hands were gripping the chair-arms as though in agony.
His head hung down almost upon his knees.

Silently Godfrey reached down and raised the head. And a cry of horror
burst from both of us.

The face was purple with congested blood, the tongue swollen and
horribly protruding, the eyes suffused and starting from their
sockets. And then, at a motion from Godfrey's finger, I saw that about
the neck a cord was tightly knotted. The man had been strangled.

Godfrey, after a breathless moment in which he made sure that the man
was quite dead, let the head fall forward again. It turned me sick to
see how low it sagged, how limp it hung. And I saw that the collar of
the white robe was spotted with blood.

I do not know what was in Godfrey's mind, but, by a common impulse, we
turned and looked at Swain. He was still on his knees beside the
couch. Apparently he had forgotten our presence.

"It's plain enough," said Godfrey, his voice thick with emotion. "She
came in and found the body. No wonder she screamed like that! But
where are the servants? Where is everybody?"

The same thought was in my own mind. The utter silence of the house,
the fact that no one came, added, somehow, to the horror of the
moment. Those wild screams must have echoed from cellar to garret--and
yet no one came!

Godfrey made a rapid scrutiny of the room, which was evidently the
library, with a double door opening upon the grounds and another
opposite opening into the hall. On the wall beside the inner door, he
found an electric button, and he pushed it for some moments, but there
was no response. If it rang a bell, the bell was so far away that we
could not hear it.

A heavy curtain hung across the doorway. Godfrey pulled it aside and
peered into the hall beyond. The hall was dark and silent. With face
decidedly grim, he took his torch from one pocket and his pistol from
another.

"Come along, Lester," he said. "We've got to look into this. Have your
torch ready--and your pistol. God knows wha