‘Go and see what’s been happening in that room.’ He laid Alix carefully down on a couch and bent over her. ‘My little girl,’ he murmured. ‘My poor little girl. What have they been doing to you?’ Her eyelids fluttered and her lips just murmured his name. Dick was aroused by the policeman’s touching him on the arm. ‘There’s nothing in that room, sir, but a man sitting in a chair. Looks as though he’d had some kind of bad fright, and –’ ‘Yes?’ ‘Well, sir, he’s – dead.’ They were startled by hearing Alix’s voice. She spoke as though in some kind of dream, her eyes still closed. ‘And presently,’ she said, almost as though she were quoting from something, ‘he died –’

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