"I'll not faint, or make a scene, if that is what you are afraid of, Hilton," said the girl bravely.
"That is all, then, or nearly all," went on Fenley, in the same dreary, monotonous voice. "I telephoned to Dr. Stern, and to Scotland Yard, deeming it better to communicate with you than with the local police. But it seems that Bates, our head keeper hurrying to investigate the cause of the shot, met some artist coming away from the other side of the wood. The Roxton police constable too, met and spoke with the same man, who told both Bates and the policeman that he heard the shot fired. The policeman, Farrow, refused to arrest the artist, and is now searching the wood with a number of our men----"
"Can't they be stopped?" broke in Furneaux, speaking for the first time.
"Yes, of course," and Hilton Fenley became a trifle more animated. "I wanted Farrow to wait till you came, but he insisted--said the murderer might be hiding there."
"Oh, more than half an hour after my father was shot. I forgot to mention that my mother knows nothing of the tragedy yet. That is why we did not carry my poor father's body upstairs. She might overhear the shuffling of feet, and ask the cause."
"One thing more, Mr. Fenley," said Winter, seeing that the other had made an end. "Have you the remotest reason to believe that any person harbored a grievance against your father such as might lead to the commission of a crime of this nature?"
"I've been torturing my mind with that problem since I realized that my father was dead, and I can say candidly that he had no enemies. Of course, in business, one interferes occasionally with other men's projects, but people in the City do not shoot successful opponents."
"No private feud? No dismissed servant, sent off because of theft or drunkenness?"
"Absolutely none, to my knowledge. The youngest man on the estate has been employed here five or six years."
"It is a very extraordinary crime, Mr. Fenley."
For answer, the other sank into a chair and buried his face in his hands.
"How can we get those clodhoppers out of the wood?" said Furneaux. His thin, high-pitched voice dispelled the tension, and Fenley dropped his hands.
"Bates is certain to make for a rock which commands a view of the house," he said. "Perhaps, if we go to the door, we may see them."