They entered the library, Nigel leading the way. Lord Dorminster was
lying very much as Brookes had described him, but there was something
altogether unnatural in the collapse of his head and shoulders and his
motionless body. Nigel spoke to him, touched him gently, raised him at
last into a sitting position. Something on which his right hand seemed
to have been resting clattered on to the carpet. Nigel turned around and
waved Maggie back.

"Don't come," he begged.

"Is it a stroke?" she faltered.

"I am afraid that he is dead," Nigel answered simply.

They went out into the hall and waited there in shocked silence until
the doctor arrived. The latter's examination lasted only a few seconds.
Then he pointed to the telephone.

"This is very terrible," he said. "I am afraid you had better ring up
Scotland Yard, Mr. Kingley. Lord Dorminster appears either to have shot
himself, as seems most probable," he added, glancing at the revolver
upon the carpet, "or to have been murdered."

"It is incredible!" Nigel exclaimed. "He was the sanest possible man,
and the happiest, and he hadn't an enemy in the world."

The physician pointed downwards to the revolver. Then he unfastened once
more the dead man's waistcoat, opened his shirt and indicated a small
blue mark just over his heart.