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Page 59
Then he rose, dressed partially, and joined her. She was full of
active fear.
"All went well at two o'clock," she said, "for I crept out to
listen. So did Masters. Mr. May's voice sounded clear and steady."
They found the butler at the door of the Grey Room. He was pale
and mopping his forehead.
"I've called to him, but it's as silent as the grave in there," he
said. "It's all up with the gentleman; I know it!"
"He may not be there; he may have gone out," answered Sir Walter.
Then he opened the door widely and entered. The electric light
still shone and killed the pallid white stare of the morning. Upon
a little table under it they observed Septimus May's Bible, open at
an epistle of St. Paul, but the priest himself was on the floor
some little distance away. He lay in a huddled heap of his
vestments. He had fallen upon his right side apparently, and,
though the surplice and cassock which he had worn were disarranged,
he appeared peaceful enough, with his cheek on a foot stool, as
though disposed deliberately upon the ground to sleep. His biretta
was still upon his head; his eyes were open, and the fret and
passion manifested by his face in life had entirely left it. He
looked many years younger, and no emotion of any kind marked his
placid countenance. But he was dead; his heart had ceased to beat
and his extremities were already cold. The room appeared unchanged
in every particular. As in the previous cases, death had come by
stealth, yet robbed, as far as the living could judge, of all
terror for its victim.
Masters called Caunter and Sir Walter's valet, who stood at the
door. The latter declined to enter or touch the dead, but Caunter
obeyed, and together the two men lifted Mr. May and carried him
to his own room. In a moment it seemed that the house knew what
had happened.
A scene of panic and hysteria followed below stairs, and, without
Jane Bond's description of it, Mary knew the people were running
out of the house as from a plague. She left her father with
Masters, and strove to calm the frightened domestics. She spoke
well, and explained that the event, horrible though it was, yet
proved that no cause for their alarm any longer existed.
"If it had been a wicked spirit we do not understand, it would have
had no power over Mr. May, who was a saint of God," she said. "Be
at peace, restrain yourselves, and fear nothing now. There is no
ghost here. Had it been a demon or any such thing, it must have
been conscious, and therefore powerless against Mr. May. This
proves that there is some fearful natural danger which we have not
yet discovered hidden in the room, but no harm can happen to
anybody if they do not go into the room. The police are coming
from Scotland Yard in an hour or two, and you may feel as sure,
as I do, and Sir Walter does, that they will find out the truth,
whatever it is. You must none of you think of leaving before they
come. If you do, they will only send for you again. Please
prepare your breakfast and be reasonable. Sir Walter is terribly
upset, and it would be a base thing if any of you were to desert
him at a moment like this."
They grew steadier before her, and Mrs. Forbes, the housekeeper,
who believed what Mary had said, added her voice.
Then Sir Walter's daughter returned to her father, who was with
Masters in the study. A man had already started for a doctor, but
with Mannering away there was none nearer than Neon Abbot.
Mary called on Masters to assert his authority, and reassure the
household as she had done. She told him her argument, and he
accepted it as a revelation.
"Thank God you could keep your senses and see that, ma'am! Tell
the master the same, and make him drink a drop of spirits and get
into his clothes. He's shook cruel!"
He had already brought the brandy, which was his panacea for all
ills, and now left Mary and her father together. She found him
collapsed, and forgot the cause for a few moments in her present
concern for him. Indeed, she always thought, and often said
afterwards, that but for the minor needs for action that intervened
in this series of terrible moments she must herself have gone out
of her mind. But something always happened, as in this case, to
demand her full attention, and so arrest and deflect the strain
almost at the moment of its impact.
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