"There no use torturing yourself," advised Sarbella. "It is quite certain that she is beyond all human help. There is nothing that can be done until the doctor comes. Here, man, you're wabbly--all in; sit down here on the top step. Hold yourself together the best you can, my friend." Kirklan laughed harshly, mirthlessly. "Stop calling me 'my friend,' Sarbella," he said unsteadily. "I won't have any more of that from you. If it hadn't been for your coming down here, Helen would----" He broke off abruptly, as he realized that Bates was within earshot, and that very little missed the butler. Sarbella shrugged his shoulders, but made no verbal response. The house had become intensely still again. From the foot of the stairs there was the steady, measured ticking of the tall clock on the first floor, as the long pendulum moved to and fro. Gilmore sat down on the steps, shoulders slumping forward, as he laced and unlaced his fingers. Why had Joan been sobbing in her room? What was the reason for her strange behavior? Why had her face been so ghastly pale, even before he had informed her of Helen's death? He pondered this. "Listen!" said Bates, breaking the uneasy silence. The other two men jerked into an attentive attitude. There came to their ears the hum of a powerful motor. An instant later an automobile horn blasted the stillness in brief announcement. Doctor Bushnell had arrived. CHAPTER XI BUSHNELL CALLS THE POLICE The butler hurried stumblingly down the steps to admit Doctor Bushnell, who had been the Gilmore family physician for almost a dozen years; he swung open the door, as the doctor was stepping briskly across the porch. "You got here in a hurry, doctor," said Bates. "It happened upstairs. Mr. Kirklan is up there now--at the top of the steps. She's dead; I held a mirror to her face and----" "Yes, so you told me over the telephone," broke in Doctor Bushnell; he was a tall, crisp man, with a pair of gray eyes looking out from behind a pair of rimless spectacles. "She----" began Bates again. "This is no time for conversation, my good man," the doctor again interrupted firmly, but not impatiently. "You can talk later." He started swiftly for the stairs. But Bates was not to be shaken off so easily. "You didn't give me a chance to finish telling you over the phone," he said, blocking the way. "Mr. Kirklan says she killed herself, but I know better. She was murdered." Doctor Bushnell abruptly halted. "Murdered?" he repeated. "See if you don't bear me out, sir," whispered the butler. "I'm not a detective, but I've got common sense enough to know----" The physician shook loose Bates' fingers. "There'll be time enough for that, Bates. Just now there's a chance--a bare chance--that you are mistaken, and that she is still alive. If there is any chance of saving her, there must be no wasted time."