done."

"Murder! Reith--you're joking."

"Does this room look as if I were joking? You see this great patch upon the floor, still wet, and what's upon this club? When Miss Forster and I came into this room Noel Draycott was lying here--dead."

"Dead? Draycott--I say! How did that come about? What have you done with him?"

"What someone has done with him is what Miss Forster and I were trying to ascertain when you came along. He was here perhaps not five minutes ago, and now--where is he?"

"Where's who?"

"Hullo! Now here is the whole jolly crowd! I knew how it would be. Why do all you people want to come downstairs? You were just as well off in your beds, and a lot more comfortable."

The earl's words were prompted by the fact that through the door by which he had entered were coming a stream of people, his own wife in the van. It was she who had put that question. Behind her were all sorts and conditions of people, some of them in surprising costumes. There were ladies, old and young; some of them were guests, some servants. They had one thing in common: that they were all in a state of considerable excitement. There was the same miscellaneous collection of men. The guests, for the most part, seemed disposed to treat the affair as a jest. The male servants were more serious; it might be that under no circumstances could they see a jest in anything which involved their being roused from well-earned slumber. 

It was the countess who was the first to reply to the earl: 

"My good Rupert, did you imagine that, after your rushing out of the room like that, I was going to stop in bed to be murdered? What has been going on? What a state this room is in! And, my dear Violet, what is the matter with you? You look as if you'd seen, not one ghost, but several!" When the lady saw that there really was something the matter with the girl, her flippant tones became suddenly earnest. "Violet, are you ill?"

"I twisted my foot coming down the stairs, and--it is pretty bad."

"You poor child! It's plain you can't stand; and you oughtn't to. We'll have you carried upstairs. There's a carrying chair in the hall. But"--her ladyship's glance was wandering round--"whatever has been going on in here? Is that---- What's that on the floor?" 

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