out at the front door. He had taken off his evening clothes,
and was dressed in a Norfolk coat and knickerbockers, and wore a
low brown hat. The valet had no reason to suppose that Lord
Argentine had seen him, and though his master rarely kept late
hours, thought little of the occurrence till the next morning,
when he knocked at the bedroom door at a quarter to nine as
usual. He received no answer, and, after knocking two or three
times, entered the room, and saw Lord Argentine's body leaning
forward at an angle from the bottom of the bed. He found that
his master had tied a cord securely to one of the short
bed-posts, and, after making a running noose and slipping it
round his neck, the unfortunate man must have resolutely fallen
forward, to die by slow strangulation. He was dressed in the
light suit in which the valet had seen him go out, and the
doctor who was summoned pronounced that life had been extinct
for more than four hours. All papers, letters, and so forth
seemed in perfect order, and nothing was discovered which
pointed in the most remote way to any scandal either great or
small. Here the evidence ended; nothing more could be
discovered. Several persons had been present at the
dinner-party at which Lord Augustine had assisted, and to all
these he seemed in his usual genial spirits. The valet, indeed,
said he thought his master appeared a little excited when he
came home, but confessed that the alteration in his manner was
very slight, hardly noticeable, indeed. It seemed hopeless to
seek for any clue, and the suggestion that Lord Argentine had
been suddenly attacked by acute suicidal mania was generally
accepted.

It was otherwise, however, when within three weeks,