Again through his agency had a dead man been discovered in the Grey Room.  In each case his had been the eyes first to confront a tragedy, and his the voice to report it.  The fact persisted in his mind with a dark obstinacy, as though some great personal tribulation had befallen him.

Mary stopped with her cousin and asked terrified questions, while Sir Walter, calling to Masters, hastened upstairs, followed by Septimus May.  The clergyman was also agitated, yet in his concern there persisted a note almost of triumph.

“It is there!” he cried.  “It is close to us, watching us, powerless to touch either you or me.  But this unhappy sceptic proved an easy victim.”

“Would to God I had listened to you yesterday,” said Sir Walter.  “Then this innocent man had not perhaps been snatched from life.”

“You were directed not to listen.  Your heart was hardened.  His hour had come.”

“I cannot believe it.  We may restore him.  It is impossible that he can be dead in a moment.”

They stood over the detective, and Masters and Fred Caunter, with courage and presence of mind, carried him out into the corridor.

The butler spoke.

“Run for the brandy, Fred,” he said.  “We must get some down his neck if we can.  I don’t feel the gentleman’s heart, but it may not have stopped.  He’s warm enough.”

The footman obeyed, and Hardcastle was laid upon his back.  Then Sir Walter directed Masters.

“Hold his head up.  It may be better for him.”

They waited, and, during the few moments before Caunter returned, Sir Walter spoke again.  His mind wandered backward and seemed for the moment incapable of grasping the fact before him.

“Almost the last thing the man said was to ask me why ghosts haunted the night rather than the day.”

Lennox and Mannering to bring him news when the telegram dispatched to Scotland Yard was answered, and prepared to leave them.

As he rose, he marked his old spaniel standing whimpering by his side.

“What is the matter with Prince?” he asked.

“He has not had his dinner,” said Mary.

“Let him be fed at once,” answered her father, and went out alone.

She rose to follow him immediately, but Mannering, who had stopped and was with them, begged her not to do so.

“Leave him to himself,” he said.  “This has shaken your father, as well it may.  He’s all right.  Make him take his bromide to-night, and let nobody do anything to worry him.”

The master of Chadlands meantime went afield, walked half a mile to a favorite spot, and sat down upon a seat that he had there erected.  A storm was blowing up from the south-west, and the weather of his mind welcomed it.  He alternated between bewilderment and indignation.  His own life-long philosophy and trust in the ordered foundations of human existence threatened to fail him entirely before this second stroke.  It seemed that the punctual universe was suddenly turned upside down, and had emptied a vial of horror upon his innocent head.