The Hunt Ball Mystery Part 9

"Probably a woman in it."

"Not unlikely. Good-bye."

As Kelson turned from the door, Morriston and another man appeared at the farther end of the hall and called to him.

"You know Dr. Page," he said as Kelson joined them.

"A terrible business this, doctor," Kelson observed as they shook hands.

The medico drew in a breath. "And at first sight in the highest degree mysterious," he said gravely.

"Dr. Page," said Morriston, "has made a cursory examination of the body. The autopsy will take place elsewhere. The police are making notes of everything important, and after dark will remove the body quietly by the tower door. So I hope the ladies will know nothing of the tragedy just yet."

As they were speaking a footman had opened the hall-door and now approached with a card on a salver. "Can you see this gentleman, sir?" he said.

Morriston took the card, and as he glanced at it an expression of pain crossed his face. He handed it silently to Kelson, who gave it back with a grave nod. It was the card of "Mr. Gervase Henshaw, II Stone Court, Temple, E.G."

CHAPTER VII

THE INCREDULITY OF GERVASE HENSHAW

"Show Mr. Henshaw into the library," Morriston said to the footman. "This is horribly tragic," he added in a low tone to Kelson, "but it has to be gone through, and perhaps the sooner the better. His brother?"

"Yes; he mentioned him on our way from the station the other evening. At any rate he will be able to see the situation for himself."

"You will come with me?" Morriston suggested. "You might fetch your friend, Gifford."

Kelson nodded, opened the drawing-room door and called Gifford out, while Morriston waited in the hall.

"The brother has turned up," he said as the two men joined him. "No doubt to make inquiries. What are we to say to him?"

"There is nothing to be said but the bare, inevitable truth," Gifford answered. "You can't now break it to him by degrees."

Morriston led the way to the library. By the fire stood a keen-featured, sharp-eyed man of middle height and lithe figure, whose manner and first movements as the door opened showed alertness and energy of character.

There was a certain likeness to his brother in the features and dark complexion as well as in a suggestion of unpleasant aggressiveness in the expression of his face, but where the dead man's personality had suggested determination overlaid with an easy-going, indulgent spirit of hedonism this man seemed to bristle with a restless mental activity, to be all brain; one whose pleasures lay manifestly on the intellectual side. One thing Gifford quickly noted, as he looked at the man with a painful curiosity, was that the face before him lacked much of the suggestion of evil which in the brother he had found so repellent. This man could surely be hard enough on occasion, the strong jaw and a certain hardness in the eyes told that, but except perhaps for an uncomfortable excess of sharpness, there was none of his brother's rather brutally scoffing cast of expression.

Henshaw seemed to regard the two men following Morriston into the room with a certain apprehensive surprise.

"I hope you will pardon my troubling you like this," he said to Morriston, speaking in a quick, decided tone, "but I have been rather anxious as to what has become of my brother, of whom I can get no news.

He came down to the c.u.mberbatch Hunt Ball, which I understand was held in this house, and from that evening seems to have mysteriously disappeared.

He had an important business engagement for the next day, Wednesday, which he failed to keep, and this may mean a considerable loss to him.

Can you throw any light on his movements down here?"

Morriston, dreading to break the news abruptly, had not interrupted his questions.

"I am sorry to say I can," he now answered in a subdued tone.

"Sorry?" Henshaw caught up the word quickly. "What do you mean? Has he met with an accident?"

"Worse than that," Morriston answered sympathetically.

Henshaw with a start fell back a step.

"Worse," he repeated. "You don't mean to say--"

"He is dead."

"Dead!" Surprise and shock raised the word almost to a shout. "You--"

"We have," Morriston said quietly, "only discovered the terrible truth within the last hour or so."

"But dead?" Henshaw protested incredulously. "How--how can he be dead?

How did he die? An accident?"

"I am afraid it looks as though by his own hand," Morriston answered in a hushed voice.

The expression of incredulity on Henshaw's face manifestly deepened. "By his own hand?" he echoed. "Suicide? Clement commit suicide? Impossible!

Inconceivable!"

"One would think so indeed," Morriston replied with sympathy. "May I tell you the facts, so far as we know them?"

"If you please," The words were rapped out almost peremptorily.

Morriston pointed to a chair, but his visitor, in his preoccupation, seemed to take no notice of the gesture, continuing to stand restlessly, in an att.i.tude of strained attention.

The other three men had seated themselves. Morriston without further preface related the story of the locked door in the tower and of the subsequent discovery when it had been opened. Henshaw heard him to the end in what seemed a mood of hardly restrained, somewhat resentful impatience.

"I don't understand it at all," he said when the story was finished.

"Nor do any of us," Morriston returned promptly. "The whole affair is as mysterious as it is lamentable. Still it appears to be clearly a case of suicide."

"Suicide!" Henshaw echoed with a certain scornful incredulity. "Why suicide? In connexion with my brother the idea seems utterly preposterous."

"The door locked on the inside," Morriston suggested.

"That, I grant you, is at first sight mysterious enough," Henshaw returned, his keen eyes fixed on Morriston. "But even that does not reconcile me to the monstrous improbability of my brother, Clement, taking his own life. I knew him too well to admit that."

"Unfortunately," Morriston replied, sympathetically restraining any approach to an argumentative tone, "your brother was practically a stranger to me, and to us all. My friends here, Captain Kelson and Mr.

Gifford, met him casually at the railway station and drove with him to the _Golden Lion_ in the town, where they all put up."

Henshaw's sharp scrutiny was immediately transferred from Morriston to his companions.

"Can you, gentlemen, throw any light on the matter?" he asked sharply.