“No, sir; these windows do not open at all.”
Save to remark the beauty of their color and design, Lockwood had never before noticed the windows, especially, and was genuinely surprised to discover that they could not be opened at all.
“Of what use are they?” he mused, aloud; “They give very little light.”
“They were outside windows before the study was built,” Mrs. Peyton told him, “and when the stained glass was put in, it was merely for decoration and the panes were not made movable.”
“Well, we must get in,” said Lockwood, almost impatiently. “How shall we do it? You, Ito, must know how.”
“No, sir, there is no way. Unless, the long window is unfastened.”
The long French window—really a double door—was on the other side of the study, exactly opposite the useless high windows that gave into the dining-room.
To reach it one must go out and around the house.
“You heathen!” Lockwood exclaimed, scornfully, and himself dashed out at the front door and around to the side of the house.
Mrs. Peyton started to follow, but the secretary bade her go back lest she take cold.
He reached the French window only to find it locked on the inside. He could not see in through its curtained panes, and impulsively he raised his foot and kicked through the glass at a point high enough to allow of his putting in a hand and turning back the latch.
He went into the room, and after the briefest glance at the man by the desk he went on and unbolted the door to the hall.
Helen had joined her mother and Ito, and the three stood cowering on the threshold.
“He is dead,” Gordon Lockwood said, in a calm, unemotional way. “But not by a stroke—he has killed himself.”
“How do you know?” Mrs. Peyton cried, her eyes staring and her face white.
“Go away, Helen,” Lockwood said; “go back into the living-room, and stay away.”
“Come in, Mrs. Peyton,” Lockwood went on. “You must see him, though it will shock you. See, the flow of blood is dreadful. He stabbed or shot himself.”
Conquering her aversion to the sight, Mrs. Peyton, from a sense of duty, drew nearer, and as Lockwood had said, the condition of the body was terrible indeed.
Wounded, apparently in the side of the head, Waring had fallen forward in such a way that the actual wound was concealed, but the fact was only too apparent that he had bled to death. The blotter on the desk and many of the furnishings were crimsoned and there was a large and dark stain on the rug.