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Flinging a command at the servants, he rushed to Sylvia's assistance, and, helped by Tomlinson and a couple of footmen, half carried the screaming and fighting woman up the stairs and along a corridor. Thus it happened that Robert Fenley was left in the hall with the dead body of his father.
Fenley moved uneasily, and raised his right hand to his eyes, while the left grasped the back of a chair. "Bob is my brother Robert, who is away from home at this moment," he said, and his tone deprecated the mere allusion to the rifle owned by the absentee. "I only mentioned Miss Manning's words to show how completely at a loss we all were to account for my father's wound.
I wormed the whole thing out of our sentry this afternoon. Fenley tried hard to send Farrow and Bates off on a wild-goose chase, but Farrow, quite mistakenly, saw the chance of his life and clung on to it. Had Farrow budged we could never have hanged Hilton. Don't you see how the scheme works?
A woman came from the lodge to inquire their business, and admitted the car when told that its occupants had been summoned by Mr. Hilton Fenley. "By the way," said Furneaux carelessly, "is Mr. Robert at home?" "No, sir." "When did he leave?" "I'm sure I don't know, sir." Mrs. Bates knew quite well, and Furneaux knew that she knew.
"Nothing can be done, Stern! My father is dead!" The two clasped each other's hand, and Hilton Fenley staggered slightly. He was overcome with emotion. The shock of a terrible crime had taxed his self-control to its uttermost bounds. He placed a hand over his eyes and said brokenly to the butler: "You take Dr. Stern inside, Tomlinson. I'll join you in a few minutes.
Ninety-nine people out of a hundred would have grown restive under such cross-examination, and betrayed their annoyance by word or look; not so Hilton Fenley, who behaved as if it were the most natural thing in the world that he should be tracked to his friends' residence and made to explain his comings and goings during the day.
"Shortly before five o'clock. He and Miss Manning had tea together, and afterward strolled in the gardens. I don't wonder at any artist wishing to sketch Miss Manning? Do you? If I may be allowed to say it, I have never seen a more graceful and charming girl." "May I inquire if you have made any progress in the particular inquiry for which I brought you here?" Hilton Fenley spoke savagely.
Stern's car, a closed-in runabout in which both the doctor and his chauffeur were sheltered from inclement weather. The chauffeur was lounging on the pavement, smoking a cigarette, and Fenley, of course, recognized him. His heart leaped. Let him be bold now, and he might win through.
Trenholme, of course, was surprised, since he was paying the man a rare compliment; he had expressed in the inn his full and free opinion concerning all money grubbers, and the Fenley species thereof in particular; whereupon the stout Eliza, who classed the Fenley family as "rubbish," informed him that there was a right of way through the park, and that from a certain point near a lake he could sketch the grand old manor house to his heart's content, let the Fenleys and their keepers scowl as they chose.
"Is Miss Sylvia Manning engaged to be married?" put in Furneaux. Fenley gave him a fiendish look. "What the devil has Miss Manning's matrimonial prospects got to do with this inquiry?" he said, and the venom in his tone was hardly to be accounted for by Furneaux's harmless-sounding query. "One never knows," said the little man, taking the unexpected attack with bland indifference.
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