The Hunt Ball Mystery Part 7

His sister gave a shrug. "Oh, you'll find out soon enough," she replied, with a smile.

"I shall," he replied, as two men appeared making for the servants'

entrance. "Here comes Henry with the locksmith."

Miss Morriston in her stately way looked amused.

"My dear old d.i.c.k, you have been making a fuss about it. You will probably find the door open when you go up."

"And I'll know who has been playing this stupid trick," Morriston said wrathfully.

"A footman making love to a housemaid turned the key in a panic at being trapped," Kelson said to his host.

"I dare say," Morriston replied with a laugh of ill-humour. "And he'll have to pay for his impudence."

That explanation by its feasibility was generally accepted as the simple solution of the mystery.

"Come along!" Morriston called. "We'll all go up, and see whether the door is open or not. We shall just be in time to catch the sunset."

He led the way through the hall and the corridor beyond and so up the winding stairs.

"What, not open yet?" he exclaimed as the last turn showed the workman busy at the lock. "Well, this is extraordinary."

The locksmith was kneeling and working at the door, while the footman stood over him holding a candle.

"The key is in the lock, inside, isn't it?" Morriston asked.

"Yes, sir," the man answered. "There is no doubt about that."

"How do you account for it?"

The man looked up from his task and shook his head.

"Can't account for it, sir. Unless so be as there is someone inside."

"Can you open it?"

"Yes, sir. I'll have it turned in a minute."

He took from his bag a long pair of hollow pliers which he inserted in the lock and then screwed tightly, clutching the end of the key. Then fitting a transverse rod to the pliers and using it as a lever he carefully forced the key round, and so shot back the lock.

There was a short pause while the man unscrewed his instrument; then he stepped back and pushed open the door.

Morriston went in quickly. "There is the key, sure enough," he said, looking round at the inside of the door. He took a couple of steps farther into the room, only to utter an exclamation of intense surprise and horror; then turned quickly with an almost scared face.

"Go back!" he cried hoa.r.s.ely, holding up his hands with an arresting gesture. "Kelson, Mr. Gifford, come here a moment and shut the door.

Look!" he said in a breathless whisper, pointing to the floor beneath the window through which the deep orange light of the declining sun was streaming.

An exclamation came from Kelson as he saw the object which Morriston indicated, and he turned with a stupefied look to Gifford. "My--!"

Gifford's teeth were set and he fell a step backward as though in repulsion. On the floor between the window and an old oak table which had practically hidden it from the doorway, lay the body of a man in evening clothes, one side of his s.h.i.+rt-front stained a dark colour. Although the face lay in the shadow of the high window-sill, there was no mistaking the man's ident.i.ty.

"Henshaw!" Kelson gasped.

CHAPTER VI

THE MYSTERY OF CLEMENT HENSHAW

It was the missing man, Henshaw, sure enough. The swarthy hue of his face had in death turned almost to black, but the features, together with the man's big, muscular figure were unmistakable. For some moments the three men stood looking at the body in something like bewilderment, scarcely realizing that so terrible a tragedy had been enacted in that place, amid those surroundings.

"Suicide?" Kelson was the first to break the silence.

"Must have been," Morriston responded "or how could the door have been locked from the inside. I will send at once for the police, and we must have a doctor, although that is obviously useless." He went to the door, then turned. "Will you stay here or--"

Kelson made an irresolute movement as though wavering between the implied invitation to quit the room and an inclination not to run away from the grim business. He glanced at Gifford, who showed no sign of moving.

"Just as you like," he replied in a hushed voice. "Perhaps we had better stay here till you come back."

"All right," Morriston a.s.sented. "Don't let any one come in, and I suppose we ought not to move anything in the room till the police have seen it."

He went out, closing the door.

"I can't make this out, Hugh," Kelson said, pulling himself together and moving to the opposite side of the room.

"No," Gifford responded mechanically.

"He," Kelson continued, "certainly did not give one the idea of a man who had come down here to make away with himself."

"On the contrary," his friend murmured in the same preoccupied tone.

"What do you think? How can you account for it?" Kelson demanded, as appealing to the other's greater knowledge of the world.

It seemed to be with an effort that Gifford released himself from the fascination that held his gaze to the tragedy. "It is an absolute mystery," he replied, moving to where his friend stood.

"A woman in it?"

For a moment Gifford did not answer. Then he said, "No doubt about it, I should imagine."

"It's awful," Kelson said, driven, perhaps for the first time in his life, from his habitually casual way of regarding serious things, and maybe roused by Gifford's apathy. "We didn't like--the man did not appeal to us; but to die like this. It's horrible. And I dare say it happened while the dance was in full swing down there. Why, man, Muriel and I were in the room below. I proposed to her there. And all the time this was just above us."

"It is horrible; one doesn't like to think of it," Gifford said reticently.

"I cannot understand it," Kelson went on, with a sharp gesture of perplexity. "I can imagine some sort of love affair bringing the poor fellow down to this place; but that he should come up here and do this thing, even if it went wrong, is more than I can conceive. Taking the man as we knew him it is out of all reason."

"Yes," Gifford a.s.sented. "But we don't know yet that it is a case of suicide."