Page:Fletcher - The Mortover Grange Affair.pdf/315

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THE CLAGNE BIRTHMARK
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had heard nothing. But when they came in sight of the old house, they knew that something had been heard there. There were men at the door, and men in the courtyard—the men whom they had sent off, searching, from the roadside inn. And as they drew near one man detached himself from his fellows and came to meet them. He shook his head.

"We've found him!" he announced in a hushed voice. "Young Mr. Mortover, I mean. It's a bad job-he'd been dead a good while when we came across him! Fallen over the edge o' one of them old quarries—broken his neck, I should say."

"Where have you taken him?" asked the Superintendent.

The man nodded at the house.

"We carried him straight down here," he answered. "The women's busy with him—laying him out."

Wedgwood went straight into the Grange and upstairs. Through an open door he saw two countrywomen busied about a bed. Before he could enter, Mrs. Patello, her eyes wide with amazement, came from the room and beckoned him along the corridor. She seized him by the arm.

"Mr. Wedgwood!" she whispered. "You've heard? They carried him home, dead! Philip