Henry held Mary back and implored her to wait a moment, but she shook off his hand and followed her father.

Sir Walter it was who approached Tom and grasped his arm.  In so doing he disturbed the balance of the body, which fell back and was caught by the two men.  Its weight bore Ernest Travers to the ground, but Henry was in time to save both the quick and the dead.  For Tom May had expired many hours before.  His face was of an ivory whiteness, his mouth closed.  No sign of fear, but rather a profound astonishment sat upon his features.  His eyes were opened and dim.  In them, too, was frozen a sort of speechless amazement.  How long he had been dead they knew not, but none were in doubt of the fact.  His wife, too, perceived it.  She went to where he now lay, put her arms around his neck, and fainted.

Others were moving outside, and the murmur of voices reached the Grey Room.  It was one of those tragic situations when everybody desires to be of service, and when well-meaning and small-minded people are often hurt unintentionally and never forget it, putting fancied affronts before the incidents that caused them.

The man lay dead and his wife unconscious upon his body.

Sir Walter rose to the occasion as best he might, issued orders, and begged all who heard him to obey without question.  He and his friend Travers lifted Mary and carried her to her room.  It was her nursery of old.  Here they put her on her bed, and sent Caunter for Mrs. Travers and Mary’s old servant, Jane Bond.  She had recovered consciousness before the women reached her.  Then they returned to the dead, and the master of Chadlands urged those standing on the stairs and in the corridor to go back to their breakfast and their duties.

“You can do no good,” he said.  “I will only ask Vane to help us.”

Fayre-Michell spoke, while the colonel came forward.

“Forgive me, Sir Walter, but if it is anything psychical, I ask, as a member—­”

“For Heaven’s sake do as I wish,” returned the other.  “My son-in-law is dead.  What more there is to know, you’ll hear later.  I want Vane, because he is a powerful man and can help Henry and my butler.  We have to carry—­”

He broke off.

“Dead!” gasped the visitor.

Then he hastened downstairs.  Presently they lifted the sailor among them, and got him to his own room.  They could not dispose him in a comely position—­a fact that specially troubled Sir Walter—­and Masters doubted not that the doctor would be able to do it.

Henry Lennox started as swiftly as possible for the house of the physician, four miles off.  He took a small motor-car, did the journey along empty roads in twelve minutes, and was back again with Dr. Mannering in less than half an hour.

The people, whose visit of pleasure was thus painfully brought to a close, moved about whispering on the terrace.  They had as yet heard no details, and were considering whether it would be possible to get off at once, or necessary to wait until the morrow.