She spoke comfortable words to him, and supported him to his room.  She knew the police would soon arrive, and though they could not report concerning the life, or death, of Peter Hardcastle, she doubted not that definite information relating to him must come to Chadlands quickly.  Upon that another life might hang.  Yet, when the medical man arrived from Newton, he could only say that Septimus May was dead.  He was a friend of Mannering, and knew the London opinion, that this form of apparent death might in reality conceal latent possibilities of resuscitation; but he spoke with absolute certainty.  He was old, and had nearly fifty years of professional experience behind him.

“The man is dead, or I never saw death,” he declared.  “By a hundred independent evidences we can be positive.  Post-mortem stains have already appeared, and were they ever known on a living body?  Of the others who died in this room I know nothing personally; but here is death, and in twenty-four hours the fact will be plain to the perception of an idiot.  What has happened is this:  the London police have heard of a famous, recent German case mentioned in ’Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschraft’—­an astonishing thing.  A woman, who had taken morphine and barbital, was found apparently dead after a night’s exposure in some lonely spot.  There were no reflexes, no pulse, no respiration or heart-beat.  Yet she was alive—­existing without oxygen—­an impossibility as we had always supposed.  Seeing no actual evidence of death, the physicians injected camphor and caffein and took other restorative steps, with the result that in an hour the woman breathed again!  Twenty-four hours later she was conscious and able to speak.  It is assumed that the poison and the cold night air together had paralyzed her vasomotor nerves and reduced her body to a state akin to hibernation, wherein physical needs are at their minimum.  That case has doubtless awakened these suspicions, and having regard to them, we will keep the poor gentleman in a warm room and proceed with the classical means for restoring respiration.”

The doctor was thus engaged when four men reached Chadlands after their nightly journey.  They were detective officers of wide reputation, and their chief—­a grey-haired man with a round, amiable face and impersonal manner—­listened to the events that had followed upon Peter Hardcastle’s arrival and departure.

Sir Walter himself narrated the incidents, and perceiving his excitation, Inspector Frith assumed the gentlest and most forbearing attitude that he knew.

The police had come in a fighting humor.  They arrived without any preconceived ideas or plan of action; but they were in bitter earnest, and knew that a great body of public opinion lay behind them.  That Hardcastle, who had won such credit for his department and earned the applause of two continents, should have thus been lost, in a manner so mean and futile, exasperated not only his personal colleagues, but the larger public interested in his picturesque successes and achievements.