Of a sudden he stopped short and sucked in his breath as a new thought penetrated itself into that perfectly pigeon-holed and regulated mentality of his. "Gad! surely _he_ hasn't---- Well! I ought to have detained him and brought him back on some pretext--if anything really _has_ happened to cause her to want me at this hour of the night.... Well, I'll nip along and find out. And if anything's really wrong, I shan't forget _that_ gentleman in a hurry." He reached the house without further adventure, and rang the door-bell with a steady hand. But he was hardly prepared for its response. For at the sound of it Maud Duggan came running toward him, her face white as a dead face, her eyes wild, her hair untidy, and clutching him by the arm fairly hauled him into the hallway, just as the butler--stung out of his calm demeanour by the happenings of that night--appeared from the end of the hall and came toward them. "Oh, I'm so glad you came, so glad, Mr. Deland!" she shrilled out in a high-pitched, terrified voice. "It was lucky you turned up as--as you promised. But I'm afraid our game of c-cards cannot take place. Because--oh, how can I say it? How? A terrible thing has happened, Mr. Deland, and that which I feared has come to pass, only in a much more awful manner! My--my f-father has been murdered, in full sight of us all, right there in the library, just as he was about to draw up a new will to disinherit Ross. Foully ... murdered ... poor darling!" Then the sobs caught in her throat, and she turned away a moment and hid her face in her handkerchief, while Cleek, mastering his curiosity and amazement at this curious and amazing statement, waited a moment for her to regain her composure. Then: "My dear young lady!" he cried in a low-pitched, even voice. "Murdered! And in the presence of you all! Then of course you know who his murderer is." "I don't, I don't! We none of us know! None of us!" she ejaculated, shutting her hands together and lifting a tear-stained, haggard face to his. "Oh, Mr. Deland, that is the terrible, the mysterious part of it all. It happened in a flash. Suddenly the lights went out; we heard the wheel humming, just as the Peasant Girl said it would hum, and then ... then ... the lights came up again, and there he lay, shot through the temple and stabbed to the heart, quite, quite dead!"