"Go back!" he cried hoarsely, holding up his hands with an arresting gesture. "Kelson, Mr. Gifford, come here a moment and shut the door. Look!" he said in a breathless whisper, pointing to the floor beneath the window through which the deep orange light of the declining sun was streaming.
An exclamation came from Kelson as he saw the object which Morriston indicated, and he turned with a stupefied look to Gifford. "My--!"
Gifford's teeth were set and he fell a step backward as though in repulsion. On the floor between the window and an old oak table which had practically hidden it from the doorway, lay the body of a man in evening clothes, one side of his shirt-front stained a dark colour. Although the face lay in the shadow of the high window-sill, there was no mistaking the man's identity.
It was the missing man, Henshaw, sure enough. The swarthy hue of his face had in death turned almost to black, but the features, together with the man's big, muscular figure were unmistakable. For some moments the three men stood looking at the body in something like bewilderment, scarcely realizing that so terrible a tragedy had been enacted in that place, amid those surroundings.
"Suicide?" Kelson was the first to break the silence.
"Must have been," Morriston responded "or how could the door have been locked from the inside. I will send at once for the police, and we must have a doctor, although that is obviously useless." He went to the door, then turned. "Will you stay here or--"
Kelson made an irresolute movement as though wavering between the implied invitation to quit the room and an inclination not to run away from the grim business. He glanced at Gifford, who showed no sign of moving.
"Just as you like," he replied in a hushed voice. "Perhaps we had better stay here till you come back."
"All right," Morriston assented. "Don't let any one come in, and I suppose we ought not to move anything in the room till the police have seen it."
"I can't make this out, Hugh," Kelson said, pulling himself together and moving to the opposite side of the room.
"He," Kelson continued, "certainly did not give one the idea of a man who had come down here to make away with himself."
"On the contrary," his friend murmured in the same preoccupied tone.