A few minutes later, Mrs. Mallet came in.  She was not broken down—­ on the contrary, she was calm—­stoically, tragically, pitiably calm; with that ghastly calmness which is more terrible by far than the most demonstrative grief.  Her face, though deadly white, did not move a muscle.  Not a tear was in her eyes.  Even her bloodless hands hardly twitched at the folds of her hastily assumed black gown.  She clenched them after a minute when she had grasped mine silently; I could see that the nails dug deep into the palms in her painful resolve to keep herself from collapsing.

Hilda Wade, with infinite sisterly tenderness, led her over to a chair by the window in the summer twilight, and took one quivering hand in hers.  “I have been telling Dr. Cumberledge, Lina, about what I most fear for your dear brother, darling; and . . .  I think . . . he agrees with me.”

Mrs. Mallet turned to me, with hollow eyes, still preserving her tragic calm.  “I am afraid of it, too,” she said, her drawn lips tremulous.  “Dr. Cumberledge, we must get him back!  We must induce him to face it!”

“And yet,” I answered, slowly, turning it over in my own mind; “he has run away at first.  Why should he do that if he means—­to commit suicide?” I hated to utter the words before that broken soul; but there was no way out of it.

Hilda interrupted me with a quiet suggestion.  “How do you know he has run away?” she asked.  “Are you not taking it for granted that, if he meant suicide, he would blow his brains out in his own house?  But surely that would not be the Le Geyt way.  They are gentle-natured folk; they would never blow their brains out or cut their throats.  For all we know, he may have made straight for Waterloo Bridge,”—­she framed her lips to the unspoken words, unseen by Mrs. Mallet,—­“like his uncle Alfred.”

“That is true,” I answered, lip-reading.  “I never thought of that either.”

“Still, I do not attach importance to this idea,” she went on.  “I have some reason for thinking he has run away . . . elsewhere; and if so, our first task must be to entice him back again.”

“What are your reasons?” I asked, humbly.  Whatever they might be, I knew enough of Hilda Wade by this time to know that she had probably good grounds for accepting them.

“Oh, they may wait for the present,” she answered.  “Other things are more pressing.  First, let Lina tell us what she thinks of most moment.”

Mrs. Mallet braced herself up visibly to a distressing effort.  “You have seen the body, Dr. Cumberledge?” she faltered.

“No, dear Mrs. Mallet, I have not.  I came straight from Nathaniel’s.  I have had no time to see it.”

“Dr. Sebastian has viewed it by my wish—­he has been so kind—­and he will be present as representing the family at the post-mortem.  He notes that the wound was inflicted with a dagger—­a small ornamental Norwegian dagger, which always lay, as I know, on the little what-not by the blue sofa.”