“May I inquire concerning Mr. Hardcastle?  I hope he had no wife or family to mourn him.”

“He was a bachelor, and lived with his mother, who keeps a shop.  The intention is to examine his body this morning, and submit it to certain conclusive tests.  Nobody expects much from them, but they’re not going to lose half a chance.  He was a great man.”

“You will hear at once from London if anything transpires to help you?”

“We shall hear by noon at latest.”

Sir Walter left them then, and Masters took the four to their accommodation.  Their rooms were situated together in the corridor, as near the east end of it as possible.  But the four were not yet of one mind, and when they met presently, and walked together in the garden for an hour, it appeared that while two of them agreed with Inspector Frith, under whom all acted, the fourth held to a contrary view, and desired to take the second of the two channels his chief had mentioned.

Thus three men believed some extraordinary concatenation of circumstances, probably mechanical in operation, was responsible for all that had happened in the Grey Room; but the fourth, a man older than Frith, and in some sort his rival for many years, held to it that the reason of these things must be sought in an active and conscious agency.  He trusted in a living cause, but felt confident that it was not a sane one.  He had known a case when a madman, unsuspected of madness, had operated with extraordinary skill to destroy innocent persons and escape detection, and already he was disposed to believe that among the household of Chadlands might hide such an insane criminal.

On a similar plane, it was in his personal experience that weak-minded persons, possessed with a desire to do something out of the common, had often planned and perpetrated apparent physical phenomena, and created an appearance of supernatural visitations, only exposed after great difficulty by professional research.  Along such lines, therefore, this man was prepared to operate, and he believed it might be possible that a maniac, in possession of some physical secret, would be found among the inhabitants of the manor house.  He did not, however, elaborate this opinion, but kept it to himself.  Indeed, the human element of jealousy, so often responsible for the frustration of the worthiest human ambitions, was not absent from the minds of the four now concerned with this problem.

Each desired to solve it, and while no rivalry existed among them, save in the case of the two older men, it was certain that the eldest of the four would not lose his hold on his own theory, or be at very vital pains to stultify it.  All, however, were fully conscious of the danger before them, and Frith, from the first, directed that none was to work alone, either in the Grey Room or elsewhere.

At noon a telegram arrived for Mr. Frith from Scotland Yard.  It recorded the fact that Peter Hardcastle was dead, and that examination had revealed no cause for his end.  The news reached Sir Walter at once, and if ever he rejoiced in the death of a fellow-creature, it was upon this occasion.  It meant unspeakable relief both for him and his daughter.