"No!" Natalie screamed. "No! Eric, don't say----"
But Eric Stannard would say no word again in this world.
Beatrice Faulkner staggered to a divan and sank down among the pillows.
"Do something, Blake," she cried. "Get a doctor. Get Mr. Barry. Call Halpin. Oh, Joyce, what does it all mean?"
Then Mrs. Faulkner forced herself to go to Joyce's assistance, and gently raised her from the floor, where she was still crouching by her husband's side.
"I don't--know--" returned Joyce Stannard, her frightened eyes staring in tearless agony. "Did you kill him, Natalie?"
"No!" cried the girl. "You know I didn't! You killed him yourself!"
Halpin, the butler, came in the room, followed by Miller, who was Stannard's own man.
Astounded, amazed, but not hysterical, these old, trusted and capable servants took the helm.
"Telephone for Doctor Keith," Miller told the other, "and then find Mr. Barry."
Barry Stannard was Eric's son by a former marriage; a boy of twenty, of lovable and sunny disposition, and devoted to his father and to his young stepmother. He soon appeared, for he had been found strolling about the grounds.
He came in at Halpin's message, and seeing the still figure in the armchair, sprang toward it, with a cry. Then, as suddenly, he turned, and without a word or glance at any one else, he ran from the room.
Without touching it further than to assure himself that life was really extinct, Miller stood, a self-appointed sentinel over the body of his dead master. He looked curiously at the instrument of death, but said no word concerning it.
There was more or less confusion. Several servants, both men and women, came to the doors, some daring to enter, but except in one or two instances, Miller ordered them out.
Annette, Mrs. Stannard's maid, he advised to look after the ladies, and Foster, a houseman, he detailed to keep an eye on Barry.
"I don't know," returned Miller, calmly. "He just stepped out--probably he's on the terrace. Don't annoy him by intrusion, but be near if he wants you."
The three women of the household said almost nothing. Mrs. Faulkner was so stupefied by the situation, and the inexplicable attitude in which she had found her hostess and the girl, Natalie, she could think of nothing to say to either. And the two who had stood near the dying man, as the light disclosed the group, were equally silent.