My call remained unanswered. A little wondering where the man could he, I peeped inside. My first impression was that this room, like the other, was untenanted. A second glance, however, revealed a booted foot, toe upwards, which was thrust out from the other side of the bed. Thinking that he might be in one of his wild moods, and was playing me some trick, I called out to him again. "Vernon, what little game are you up to now?" Silence. And in the silence there was, as it were, a quality which set my heart in a flutter. I became conscious of there being, in the air, something strange. I went right into the room, and I looked down on Decimus Vernon. I thought that I had never seen him look more handsome than he did then, as he lay on his back on the floor, his right arm raised above his head, his left lying lightly across his breast, an expression on his face which was almost like a smile, looking, for all the world as if he were asleep. But I was enough of a physician to feel sure that he was dead. For a moment or two I hesitated. I glanced quickly about the room. What had been his occupation when death had overtaken him seemed plain. On the dressing table was an open case of rings. Three or four of them lay in a little heap upon the table. He had, apparently, been trying them on. I called out, with unintentional loudness--indeed, so loudly, that, in that presence, I was startled by the sound of my own voice. "Parkes?" Parkes came hurrying in. "Did you call, sir?" He knew I had called. The muscles of the fellow's face were trembling. "Mr. Vernon's dead." "Dead!" Parkes' jaw dropped open. He staggered backwards. "Come and look at him." He did as I told him, unwillingly enough. He stood beside me, looking down at his master as he lay upon the floor. Words dropped from his lips. "Mr. Crampton didn't do it." I caught the words up quickly. "Of course he didn't, but--how do you know?" "I heard Mr. Vernon shout 'Go to the devil' to him as he went downstairs. Besides, I heard Mr. Vernon moving about the room after Mr. Crampton had gone." I gave a sigh of relief. I had wondered. I knelt at Vernon's side. He was quite warm, but I could detect no pulsation. "Perhaps, Mr. Benham, sir," suggested Parkes, "Mr. Vernon has fainted, or had a fit, or something." "Hurry and fetch a doctor. We shall see." Parkes vanished. Although my pretensions to medical knowledge are but scanty, I had no doubt whatever that a doctor would pronounce that Decimus Vernon was no longer to be numbered with the living. How he had come by his death was another matter. His expression was so tranquil, his attitude, as of a man lying asleep upon his back, so natural; that it almost seemed as if death had come to him in one of those commonplace forms in which it comes to all of us. And yet----