Mannering had spoken for half an hour with London, and received directions that puzzled him not a little by their implication.  For a moment he seemed unwilling to speak before Mary.  Then he begged her bluntly to leave them for a while.

“It’s this way,” he said when she was gone.  “They’re harboring a mad idea in London, though, of course, the facts will presently convince them to the contrary.  Surely I must know death when I see it?  But a divisional surgeon, or some other medical official, directs me to bring this poor fellow’s body to London to-night.  Every care must be taken, warmth and air applied, and so on.  They’ve evidently got a notion that, since life appears to go so easily in the Grey Room, and leave no scratch or wound, either life has not gone at all, or that it may be within the power of science to bring it back again.  In a sense this is a reflection upon me—­as though it were possible that I could make any mistake between death and suspended animation; but I must do as I’m ordered.  I travel to town with the dead man to-night, and if they find he is anything but dead as a doornail, I’ll—­”

The doctor was writing his reminiscences, “The Recollections of a Country Physician,” and he could not fail to welcome these events, for they were destined to lend extraordinary attraction to a volume otherwise not destined to be much out of the common.

He spoke again.

“I should be very glad if you would accompany me, Lennox.  I shall have a police inspector from Plymouth; but it would be a satisfaction if you could come.  Moreover, you would help me in London.”

“I’ll come up, certainly.  You don’t mind, Uncle Walter?”

“Not if Mannering wishes it.  We owe him more than we can ever repay.  Anything that we can do to lessen his labors ought to be done.”

“I should certainly welcome your company.  A small saloon carriage is to be put on to the Plymouth train that leaves Newton for London before midnight.  We shall be met at Paddington by some of their doctors.  And as to Chadlands, four men arrive to-morrow morning by the same train that Peter Hardcastle came down in last night.  We shall pass them on the way.  They will take charge both of the Grey Room and the house as soon as they arrive.”

“And they will be welcome.  I would myself willingly pull down Chadlands to the foundations if by so doing I could discover the truth.”

“It demands no such sacrifice,” declared May, who had listened to these facts.  “Bricks and mortar, stone and timber are innocent things.  One might as soon dissect a thunder-cloud to find the lightning as destroy material substances to discover what is hidden in this house.  The unknown being, about his Master’s business here, will no more yield its secret to four detectives, or an army of them, than it did to one.  ‘What I do thou knowest not now.’  It is all summed up in that.”

He turned to Mannering and asked a sudden question.