Page:Miss Madelyn Mack Detective.pdf/119

"Shall I get the brandy, sir?"

"Brandy?" the Senator repeated vaguely. The next instant, as though grasping the situation anew, he sprang down the hall with the skirts of his frock coat flapping against his knees. At the door of the veranda, he whirled.

"Get the doctor on the 'phone, Dorrence—Redfield, if Scott is out. Let him know it's a matter of minutes! And, Dorrence—"

"Yes, sir!"

"Tell the telephone girl that, if this leaks to the newspapers, I will have the whole office discharged!"

A shifting group on the edge of the lawn, with that strange sense of awkwardness which sudden death brings, showed the scene of the tragedy.

The circle fell back as the Senator's figure appeared. On the grass, Rennick's body still lay where it had fallen—suggesting a skater who has ignominiously collapsed on the ice rather than a man stabbed to the heart. The group had been wondering at the fact in whispered monosyllables.

A kneeling girl was bending over the secretary's body. It was not until Senator Duffield had spoken her name twice that she glanced up. In her eyes was a grief so wild that for a moment he was held dumb.