risk it now," said the Inspector.

Close together we entered and made our way towards the study. As we
passed the door-way of the ante-room in which the telephone was
placed. I glanced, aside, and thereupon:

"My God, Gatton!" I groaned. "Look!"

He pulled up and the two of us stood, horror-stricken, rooted to the
spot, looking into the little room.

I have said that Coates invariably closed the windows before leaving
the house, but here the window was open. Prone upon the floor was
stretched the figure of a man!

He wore a light overcoat, and his hat lay under the telephone
table--where it had evidently rolled at the moment of his fall. The
poisonous smell was more apparent here than elsewhere; and looking
down at the prone figure, the face of which was indiscernible because
of the man's position:

"Why, Gatton!" I said in an awed whisper--"look!... he was speaking to
some one!"

"I'm looking!" replied Gatton grimly.

Grasped rigidly in his left hand the fallen man held the telephone!

"We want gas-masks for this job," said the Inspector.

His words were true enough. I had already recognized the odor of the
foul stuff. It was identical with that which, as we had come down from
the upper floor of the Abbey Inn, had proceeded from the room wherein
the mysterious shell had exploded. In a word my cottage was filled
with some kind of poison-gas!

"We must risk it, anyway," said Gatton, "and find out who it is."

I nodded, sick with foreboding. Stooping swiftly, he succeeded in
turning over the prone figure, whereupon I quite failed to restrain a
hoarse cry of horror....

_It was Eric Coverly_!

The fume-laden room seemed to swim around me as I looked down at the
dreadfully contorted features over which was creeping that greenish
tint which had characterized the face of Sir Marcus as I had seen it
on the morning of the body's recovery from the hold of the _Oritoga_.

"Drag him out," said Gatton huskily; "he may be alive."

But even as we bent to the attempt, both my companion and I were
seized with violent nausea; for the wisps of gray mist which still
floated in the air were nevertheless sufficiently deadly. However, we
succeeded at last in dragging Eric Coverly into the passage. Here it
became necessary to detach the telephone from the death-grip in which
he held it.

I turned my head aside whilst Gatton accomplished this task; then
together we bore Coverly out into the porch. At this point we were
b