“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 assented.  “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.”