A stifled shriek sounded from the doorway, and in tottered Mrs.
Howett, the old housekeeper, with other servants peering over her
shoulder into that warmly lighted dining room where Sir Charles
Abingdon lay huddled in his own chair--dead.



CHAPTER III. SHADOWS

"Had you reason to suspect any cardiac trouble, Doctor
McMurdoch?" asked Harley.

Doctor McMurdoch, a local practitioner who had been a friend of
Sir Charles Abingdon, shook his head slowly. He was a tall,
preternaturally thin Scotsman, clean-shaven, with shaggy dark
brows and a most gloomy expression in his deep-set eyes. While
the presence of his sepulchral figure seemed appropriate enough
in that stricken house, Harley could not help thinking that it
must have been far from reassuring in a sick room.

"I had never actually detected anything of the kind," replied the
physician, and his deep voice was gloomily in keeping with his
personality. "I had observed a certain breathlessness at times,
however. No doubt it is one of those cases of unsuspected
endocarditis. Acute. I take it," raising his shaggy brows
interrogatively, "that nothing had occurred to excite Sir
Charles?"

"On the contrary," replied Harley, "he was highly distressed
about some family trouble, the nature of which he was about to