"We must risk it, anyway," said Gatton, "and find out who it is."
I nodded, sick with foreboding. Stooping swiftly, he succeeded in turning over the prone figure, whereupon I quite failed to restrain a hoarse cry of horror....
The fume-laden room seemed to swim around me as I looked down at the dreadfully contorted features over which was creeping that greenish tint which had characterized the face of Sir Marcus as I had seen it on the morning of the body's recovery from the hold of the _Oritoga_.
"Drag him out," said Gatton huskily; "he may be alive."
But even as we bent to the attempt, both my companion and I were seized with violent nausea; for the wisps of gray mist which still floated in the air were nevertheless sufficiently deadly. However, we succeeded at last in dragging Eric Coverly into the passage. Here it became necessary to detach the telephone from the death-grip in which he held it.
I turned my head aside whilst Gatton accomplished this task; then together we bore Coverly out into the porch. At this point we were both overcome again by the fumes. Gatton was the first to recover sufficiently to stoop and examine the victim of this fiendish outrage. I clutched dizzily at an upright of the porch, and:
"He was the last!" he said strangely. "They have triumphed after all."
The man who had driven the car and who now stood in a state of evident stupefaction looking over the gate, where he had been warned to remain by the Inspector, came forward on seeing Gatton beckoning to him.
"Notify the local officer in charge and bring a doctor," said Gatton. He turned to me. "Which is the nearest?"
Rapidly I gave the man the necessary instructions and he went running out to the car and soon was speeding away towards the house of a local physician.
I find it difficult to recapture the peculiar horror of the next few minutes, during which, half-fearful of entering the cottage, Gatton and I stood in the little sheltered garden adjoining the porch looking down at the body of this man who had met his end under my roof, in circumstances at once dreadful and incomprehensible.
Tragically, Eric Coverly was vindicated; by his death he was proved innocent. And by the manner of his death we realized that he had fallen a victim to the same malign agency as his cousin.