"You lied to me then!" he exclaimed.
"I had as much right to lie to you," Spencer answered calmly, "as you
had to ask me questions. I had----"
He stopped short in the middle of his sentence. The faces of the three
men were a study in varying expressions. From some other part of the
house there came to them the sound of a woman's sudden cry of
terror--the cry of a woman who had awakened suddenly to look into the
face of death. Duncombe's uplifted glass fell with a crash upon the
table. The red wine trickled across the table-cloth.
CHAPTER XXII
LORD RUNTON IS SUSPICIOUS
Duncombe was out of the room in a very few seconds. The others hesitated
for a moment whether to follow him or not. Spencer was the first to rise
to his feet and moved towards the door. Lord Runton and Pelham followed
a moment or two later. Outside in the hall the house was perfectly
silent.
Duncombe reached the library door just in time to find himself
confronted by half a dozen of the men and women servants coming from the
back of the house. With his hand upon the door-knob he waved them back.
"Be so good, Mrs. Harrison," he said to the housekeeper, "as to keep
better order in the servants' hall.
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