Sir Leicester, who has covered his face with his hands, uttering a single groan, requests him to pause for a moment.  By and by he takes his hands away, and so preserves his dignity and outward calmness, though there is no more colour in his face than in his white hair, that Mr. Bucket is a little awed by him.  Something frozen and fixed is upon his manner, over and above its usual shell of haughtiness, and Mr. Bucket soon detects an unusual slowness in his speech, with now and then a curious trouble in beginning, which occasions him to utter inarticulate sounds.  With such sounds he now breaks silence, soon, however, controlling himself to say that he does not comprehend why a gentleman so faithful and zealous as the late Mr. Tulkinghorn should have communicated to him nothing of this painful, this distressing, this unlooked-for, this overwhelming, this incredible intelligence.

“Again, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,” returns Mr. Bucket, “put it to her ladyship to clear that up.  Put it to her ladyship, if you think it right, from Inspector Bucket of the Detective.  You’ll find, or I’m much mistaken, that the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn had the intention of communicating the whole to you as soon as he considered it ripe, and further, that he had given her ladyship so to understand.  Why, he might have been going to reveal it the very morning when I examined the body!  You don’t know what I’m going to say and do five minutes from this present time, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet; and supposing I was to be picked off now, you might wonder why I hadn’t done it, don’t you see?”

True.  Sir Leicester, avoiding, with some trouble those obtrusive sounds, says, “True.”  At this juncture a considerable noise of voices is heard in the hall.  Mr. Bucket, after listening, goes to the library-door, softly unlocks and opens it, and listens again.  Then he draws in his head and whispers hurriedly but composedly, “Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, this unfortunate family affair has taken air, as I expected it might, the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn being cut down so sudden.  The chance to hush it is to let in these people now in a wrangle with your footmen.  Would you mind sitting quiet—­on the family account—­while I reckon ’em up?  And would you just throw in a nod when I seem to ask you for it?”

Sir Leicester indistinctly answers, “Officer.  The best you can, the best you can!” and Mr. Bucket, with a nod and a sagacious crook of the forefinger, slips down into the hall, where the voices quickly die away.  He is not long in returning; a few paces ahead of Mercury and a brother deity also powdered and in peach-blossomed smalls, who bear between them a chair in which is an incapable old man.  Another man and two women come behind.  Directing the pitching of the chair in an affable and easy manner, Mr. Bucket dismisses the Mercuries and locks the door again.  Sir Leicester looks on at this invasion of the sacred precincts with an icy stare.