"But dead?" Henshaw protested incredulously. "How--how can he be dead? How did he die? An accident?"
"I am afraid it looks as though by his own hand," Morriston answered in a hushed voice.
The expression of incredulity on Henshaw's face manifestly deepened. "By his own hand?" he echoed. "Suicide? Clement commit suicide? Impossible! Inconceivable!"
"One would think so indeed," Morriston replied with sympathy. "May I tell you the facts, so far as we know them?"
"If you please," The words were rapped out almost peremptorily.
Morriston pointed to a chair, but his visitor, in his preoccupation, seemed to take no notice of the gesture, continuing to stand restlessly, in an attitude of strained attention.
The other three men had seated themselves. Morriston without further preface related the story of the locked door in the tower and of the subsequent discovery when it had been opened. Henshaw heard him to the end in what seemed a mood of hardly restrained, somewhat resentful impatience.
"I don't understand it at all," he said when the story was finished.
"Nor do any of us," Morriston returned promptly. "The whole affair is as mysterious as it is lamentable. Still it appears to be clearly a case of suicide."
"Suicide!" Henshaw echoed with a certain scornful incredulity. "Why suicide? In connexion with my brother the idea seems utterly preposterous."
"The door locked on the inside," Morriston suggested.
"That, I grant you, is at first sight mysterious enough," Henshaw returned, his keen eyes fixed on Morriston. "But even that does not reconcile me to the monstrous improbability of my brother, Clement, taking his own life. I knew him too well to admit that."
"Unfortunately," Morriston replied, sympathetically restraining any approach to an argumentative tone, "your brother was practically a stranger to me, and to us all. My friends here, Captain Kelson and Mr. Gifford, met him casually at the railway station and drove with him to the _Golden Lion_ in the town, where they all put up."
Henshaw's sharp scrutiny was immediately transferred from Morriston to his companions.
"Can you, gentlemen, throw any light on the matter?" he asked sharply.
"None at all, I am sorry to say," Kelson answered readily. "I may as well tell you how our very slight acquaintance with him came about."