“I think you’re right, Swain,” he said.  “But we’d better call someone.”

“Call away!” snarled Swain.

“You mean there’s no one here?  Surely, her father ...”

He stopped, for at the words Swain had burst into a hoarse laugh.

“Her father!” he cried.  “Oh, yes; he’s here!  Call him!  He’s over there!”

He made a wild gesture toward a high-backed easy-chair beside the table, his eyes gleaming with an almost fiendish excitement; then the gleam faded, and he turned back to the girl.

Godfrey cast one astonished glance at him and strode to the chair.  I saw his face quiver with sudden horror, I saw him catch at the table for support, and for an instant he stood staring down.  Then he turned stiffly toward me and motioned me to approach.

In the chair a man sat huddled forward—­a grey-haired man, clad in a white robe.  His hands were gripping the chair-arms as though in agony.  His head hung down almost upon his knees.

Silently Godfrey reached down and raised the head.  And a cry of horror burst from both of us.

The face was purple with congested blood, the tongue swollen and horribly protruding, the eyes suffused and starting from their sockets.  And then, at a motion from Godfrey’s finger, I saw that about the neck a cord was tightly knotted.  The man had been strangled.

Godfrey, after a breathless moment in which he made sure that the man was quite dead, let the head fall forward again.  It turned me sick to see how low it sagged, how limp it hung.  And I saw that the collar of the white robe was spotted with blood.

I do not know what was in Godfrey’s mind, but, by a common impulse, we turned and looked at Swain.  He was still on his knees beside the couch.  Apparently he had forgotten our presence.

“It’s plain enough,” said Godfrey, his voice thick with emotion.  “She came in and found the body.  No wonder she screamed like that!  But where are the servants?  Where is everybody?”

The same thought was in my own mind.  The utter silence of the house, the fact that no one came, added, somehow, to the horror of the moment.  Those wild screams must have echoed from cellar to garret—­and yet no one came!

Godfrey made a rapid scrutiny of the room, which was evidently the library, with a double door opening upon the grounds and another opposite opening into the hall.  On the wall beside the inner door, he found an electric button, and he pushed it for some moments, but there was no response.  If it rang a bell, the bell was so far away that we could not hear it.

A heavy curtain hung across the doorway.  Godfrey pulled it aside and peered into the hall beyond.  The hall was dark and silent.  With face decidedly grim, he took his torch from one pocket and his pistol from another.

“Come along, Lester,” he said.  “We’ve got to look into this.  Have your torch ready—­and your pistol.  God knows what further horrors this house contains!”