confide to me when this sudden illness seized him."

He stared hard at Doctor McMurdoch, wondering how much he might
hope to learn from him respecting the affairs of Sir Charles. It
seemed almost impertinent at that hour to seek to pry into the
dead man's private life.

To the quiet, book-lined apartment stole now and again little
significant sounds which told of the tragedy in the household.
Sometimes when a distant door was opened, it would be the sobs of
a weeping woman, for the poor old housekeeper had been quite
prostrated by the blow. Or ghostly movements would become audible
from the room immediately over the library--the room to which the
dead man had been carried; muffled footsteps, vague stirrings of
furniture; each sound laden with its own peculiar portent,
awakening the imagination which all too readily filled in the
details of the scene above. Then, to spur Harley to action, came
the thought that Sir Charles Abingdon had appealed to him for
aid. Did his need terminate with his unexpected death or would
the shadow under which he had died extend now? Harley found himself
staring across the library at the photograph of Phil Abingdon.
It was of her that Sir Charles had been speaking when that
mysterious seizure had tied his tongue. That strange, fatal
illness, mused Harley, all the more strange in the case of a man
supposedly in robust health--it almost seemed like the working of
a malignant will. For the revelation, whatever its nature, had
almost but not quite been made in Harley's office that evening.
Something, some embarrassment or mental disability, had stopped
Sir Charles from completing his statement. Tonight death had
stopped him.