With some difficulty they discovered the staircase leading to the tower. It was narrow but straight, and not so steep as might have been expected. At the top Herrick--leading as usual--was confronted by a closed door of plain deal. It was not locked however, and having knocked without receiving a reply he opened it. Joyce at his heels peeped over his shoulder and beheld a small square room with windows on all four sides, and a large central globe burning in the ceiling. In contrast to the rest of the house, this room was absolutely bare. Blank walls, Chinese matting on the floor, a camp bedstead in one corner, a deal table without a covering in another, and two cane chairs. No anchorite could have had a more ascetic cell. Herrick took in the scene at a glance, took in also, its--to him--central feature, the body of a man lying face downwards, near the bed. Joyce saw the corpse also, and remained at the door, shaking and white. "Murder or suicide?" Jim asked himself as he turned over the dead. That, which had once been a man, was in evening dress. In the finest of linen and jewellery, the most immaculate of clothes, it lay under the scrutinising eye of Dr. Herrick. A lean evil face, with a hook nose, scanty grey hair cut short and a long moustache carefully trimmed. The left hand gripped a revolver; the shirt front over the heart was covered with blood, and a stream, coagulated and black, streaked the matting. "In God's name?" cried Joyce not daring to enter, "what is it?" "It was once the owner of this house I suppose," said Herrick grimly. "Now, it is a piece of carrion. Suicide apparently. Dead over twenty-four hours. Shot through the heart. A steady hand to do that. H'm, left-handed too. Is it suicide, or murder? Here's a damnable discovery to cap the adventure," said Dr. Jim gravely. From the doorway came a gasp, a tittering laugh. Jim had just time to spring forward when Joyce lunged into his arms. The long expected nerve-storm had come at last. CHAPTER II DE MORTUIS NIL NISI MALUM "And sunsets fire, the Saxham spire, My guide post unto heaven." So sang midway in the last century a local poet, who died long since and passed, poems and all, into oblivion. But the famous spire in its copper sheathing still catches the sunlight, and glows in the centre of Saxham, a veritable pillar of fire. Those natives who have emigrated, enlisted as soldiers, taken situations in London and elsewhere, shipped before the mast, as some have done, always remember church and spire. The children recall its ruddy blaze when they read Exodus.