"Do!" commanded Allerdyke. "But send me my driver first--I want him. Tell
him what's happened."

He waited, standing and staring at his dead cousin until Gaffney came
hurrying along the corridor. Allerdyke beckoned him into the room and
closed the door.

"Gaffney," he said. "You see how things are? Mr. James is dead--I found
him sitting there, dead. He's been dead some time--hours. There's a
doctor, a foreigner, I think, across the passage there, who says it's
been heart failure. I've sent for another doctor. Now in the meantime, I
want to see what my cousin's got on him, and I want you to help me. We'll
take everything off him in the way of valuables, papers, and so on, and
put 'em in that small hand-bag of his."

Master and man went methodically to work; and an observer of an unduly
sentimental shade of mind might have said that there was something almost
callous about their measured, business-like proceedings. But Marshall
Allerdyke was a man of eminently thorough and practical habits, and he
was doing what he did with an idea and a purpose. His cousin might have
died from sudden heart failure; again, he might not, there might have
been foul play; there might have been one of many reasons for his
unexpected death--anyway, in Allerdyke's opinion it was necessary for him
to know exactly what James was carrying about his person when death took
place. There was a small hand-bag on the dressing-table; Allerdyke opened
it and took out all its contents. They were few--a muffler, a
travelling-cap, a book or two, some foreign newspapers, a Russian
word-book, a flask, the various odds and ends, small unimportant things
which a voyager by sea and land picks up. Allerdyke took all these out,
and laying them aside on the table, directed Gaffney to take everything