They threw themselves against the door. The old gentleman was heavy and Gwynne sound and wiry in spite of his delicate appearance. The door was stout but its hinges were old, and after several attempts they drove it in. Lord Strathland's face was pale and he was panting, but he led the way rapidly through the sitting-room into the bedroom. Zeal had undressed, extended himself on the bed, and covered his body with an eider-down quilt. Lord Strathland jerked it off, and both saw what they had expected to see, for a faint odor of burnt powder lingered in the rooms. Lord Strathland's face was ghastly, almost blue. He had anticipated death, not with the imagination of the young, but dully, through the atrophied faculties of his age, and the shock could hardly have been greater had he found his grandson without warning. "What does this mean?" he demanded, thickly. "You know and I will know." Gwynne took him firmly by the arm and turned him about. "Not here," he said. "Come to the library. I will tell you, but I am no more fit to talk just now than you are to listen." His grandfather submitted, and Gwynne dropped his arm and rearranged the quilt over his cousin's body. At the same moment Lord Strathland's eyes lit on a sealed letter addressed to himself. Before Gwynne could interfere he had broken the seal. It ran: MY LORD,--I murdered Brathland. In cold blood--saving the fact that I was drunk. My entire private fortune has gone for purposes of blackmail. Even that might not have saved me eventually from the hangman, we have grown so damned democratic. All things considered, I am sure you will agree that it is quite proper I should make the exit of a gentleman while there is yet time. Jack will give you further particulars, should you care to listen to them. ZEAL." He too had known nothing of the condition of his grandfather's heart, and it had amused him to plan a last shock to the perennial optimism and complacency of the person he disliked most on earth. The smile was still on his frozen lips that expressed the amused anticipation of his brain. Death, to do him justice, he had met with none of the cowardice he had vaunted, and consistently with his arid cynical soul. "Don't read it! Don't!" Gwynne had exclaimed, in agony, and forgetting the awful figure on the bed in his alarm at the sight of his grandfather's face. "If you must know the truth let me tell it in my own way." But Lord Strathland read, and fell at his feet like a bundle of old clothes. XVII