“You go, Helen,” said her mother after a moment’s thought. “I ought to be here to look after the house, and anyway, dear, you can do it wisely and gently. Mrs. Bates likes you, and after all, it can be soon told.”
“Oh, I can’t!” cried Helen, dismayed at the thought of the awful errand.
“Yes, you can,” and Lockwood looked at her with a firm kindliness. “You want to be of help, don’t you Helen? Well, here’s one thing you can do that will be of great assistance to your mother and to me. For on us two must fall most of the sad duties of this day.”
“But what can I say? What can I tell her?”
“Just tell her the facts as far as you know them yourself. She will guess from your own agitation that something has happened. And then you will tell her, as gently as you can. Be a true woman, Helen, and remember that though your news must break her heart, yet she’d far rather hear it from you than from some less sympathetic messenger.”
“I’ll do it,” said Helen, struggling bravely to keep her tears back.
“That’s a good girl. Run right along, now, for ill news flies fast, and rumors may get to her before you reach there.”
“Now about that Nogi,” Lockwood said, thoughtfully. “Call Ito back, please, Mrs. Peyton.”
“When did you see Nogi last?” the secretary asked of the butler.
“When I came home last night, sir. Sunday is my holiday. I returned about ten, and as I found Nogi with his duties all properly done, and at his post, I went to bed. I found this morning that he had not been in his bed at all. His clothes are gone, and all his belongings. I think he will not come back.”
When Lockwood returned to the study, he found the Medical Examiner and Doctor Greenfield in consultation.
The Examiner was a large, pompous-looking man, with an air of authority. He looked at Gordon Lockwood from beneath his heavy brows, and demanded, “What do you know of this?”
The younger man resented the tone but he knew the question was justified, and so he replied, respectfully:
“Nothing more than you can see for yourself, sir. I broke in at that glass door, being unable to get in any other way, and I found Doctor Waring—as you see him now.”
“There was some other way, though, to get in and out,” Examiner Marsh stated.
“Don’t contradict me! I tell you there must have been—for this man was murdered.”