“Over there.” She pointed ahead to the drive.

“Let me come with you – do, please do!” she begged. “I dare not be left alone.”

He hesitated.

“Come,” he said roughly, and took her arm with a grip that made her wince.

Together they ran towards Elm Drive, and then he stopped.

“Go back and get my hand-lamp. It’s on my writing-table,” he said. “I will wait here for you.”

She fled back to the room, took up the lamp with fingers that trembled so violently that she could scarcely hold it, and rejoined him.

“It was over there. I heard something a second ago. If I hadn’t promised to wait–”

He turned on the light, swinging its rays over the ground before him, and going ahead of her. Presently she saw him stop, and a circle of light focussed on something brown that lay huddled on the grass.

“Stay where you are,” he commanded, “and turn your back.”

A voice hailed him in the distance: it was Puttler, and, guided by the lamp, he came on the scene.

“Who is it?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” said Dick in a low voice.

At his feet was the huddled figure of a man. He was lying on his face, and was attired from head to foot in a long black habit around which a rope was girdled.

“The Black Abbot?” said Puttler incredulously. “Is he dead?”

“Look,” said Dick, and pointed to the wet shoulder and the horror of the throat.

Puttler knelt down, and, putting his arms under the figure, turned it on its back.

The face was covered by a black cowl, and this he gently raised.

“Merciful God!” said Dick, in a hushed voice. He was looking into the grey face of Thomas, the footman.

40

“Thomas – the Black Abbot!”

Dick looked at the pitiable thing, bewildered; and then he remembered the girl and, with a low word of instruction to Puttler, went back to her.

“Is he – dead?” she asked fearfully.

“Yes, I’m afraid he is.”

“Who – who is it?”

“One of the servants,” he said evasively.

“Not Thomas?”

Why she should think it was Thomas she could not for the life of her tell.

“Yes – Thomas.”

She made no further inquiries, and they walked back without a word to his room. He rang the bell, and, to the footman who answered: “Ask Mr Glover to come to me,” he said.

The old butler came apprehensively. All the servants had heard the scream in the park.

“Where is his lordship?”

“He went up to bed about five minutes ago, Mr Alford.”

“Had he heard – anything?”

“No, sir. He’s so particular about our talking of the Black Abbot–”

“How do you know it was the Black Abbot?” asked Dick sharply, and the butler explained that somebody had seen the figure in the grounds.