“I will,” offered Bartlett, and he made his way through a living lane that opened for him. Then it closed again, hiding the body from sight. Some one placed a sweater over the face that had been so ruddy, and was now so pale.
Captain Poland, still supporting Viola on his arm, saw Bartlett approaching. Somehow he surmised what his fellow clubman was going to say.
“Oh, Harry!” exclaimed Viola, impulsively holding out her hands to him. “Is he all right? Is he better?”
“I am sorry,” began Harry, and then she seemed to sense what he was going to add.
“He isn't—Oh, don't tell me he is—”
“The doctor says he is dead, Viola,” answered Bartlett gently. “He passed away without pain or suffering. It must have been heart disease.”
But Viola Carwell never heard the last words, for she really fainted this time, and Captain Poland laid her gently down on the soft, green grass.
“Better get the doctor for her,” he advised Bartlett. “She'll need him, if her father doesn't.” As Harry Bartlett turned aside, waving back the curiosity seekers that were already leaving the former scene of excitement for the latest, LeGrand Blossom came up. He seemed very cool and not at all excited, considering what had happened.
“I will look after Miss Carwell,” he said.
“Perhaps you had better see to Mr. Carwell—Mr. Carwell's remains, Blossom,” suggested Captain Poland. “Miss Carwell will be herself very soon. She has only fainted. Her father is dead.
“Dead? Are you sure?” asked LeGrand Blossom, and his manner seemed a trifle more naturally excited.
“Dr. Baird says so. You'd better go to him. He may want to ask some questions, and you were more closely associated with Carwell than any of the rest of us.”
“Very well, I'll look after the body,” said the secretary. “Did the doctor say what killed him?”
“No. That will be gone into later, I dare say. Probably heart disease; though I never knew he had it,” said Bartlett.
“Nor I,” added Blossom. “I'd be more inclined to suspect apoplexy. But are you sure Miss Carwell will be all right?”
“Yes,” answered Captain Poland, who had raised her head after sprinkling in her face some water a caddy brought in his cap. “She is reviving.”
Dr. Baird came up just then and gave her some aromatic spirits of ammonia.
Viola opened her eyes. There was no comprehension in them, and she looked about in wonder. Then, as her benumbed brain again took up its work, she exclaimed:
“Oh, it isn't true! It can't be true! Tell me it isn't!”
“I am sorry, but it seems to be but too true,” said Captain Poland gently. “Did he ever speak of trouble with his heart, Viola?”
“Never, Gerry. He was always so well and strong.”
“You had better come to the clubhouse,” suggested Bartlett, and she went with them both.
A little later the body of Horace Carwell was carried to the “nineteenth hole”—that place where all games are played over again in detail as the contestants put away their clubs.
A throng followed the silent figure, borne on the shoulders of some grounds workmen, but only club members were admitted to the house. And among them buzzed talk of the tragedy that had so suddenly ended the day of sports.
“He looked all right when he started to play,” said one. “Never saw him in better form, and some of his shots were marvelous.”
“He'd been drinking a little too much for a man to play his best, especially on a hot day,” ventured another. “He must have been taken ill from that, and the excitement of trying to win over the major, and it affected his heart.”
“Never knew him to have heart disease,” declared Bruce Garrigan.
“Lots of us have it and don't know it,” commented Tom Sharwell. “I suppose it will take an autopsy to decide.”
“Rather tough on Miss Carwell,” was another comment.
“That's true!” several agreed.
The body of Horace Carwell was placed in one of the small card rooms, and the door locked. Then followed some quick telephoning on the part of Dr. Baird, who had recently joined the golf club, and who had arrived at the clubhouse shortly before Mr. Carwell dropped dead.
It was at the suggestion of Harry Bartlett that Dr. Addison Lambert, the Carwell family physician, was sent for, and that rather aged practitioner arrived as soon as possible.
He was taken in to view the body, together with Dr. Baird, who was almost pathetically deferential to his senior colleague. The two medical men were together in the room with the body for some time, and when they came out Viola Carwell was there to meet them. Dr. Lambert put his arms about her. He had known her all her life—since she first ventured into this world, in fact—and his manner was most fatherly.
“Oh, Uncle Add!” she murmured to him—for she had long called him by this endearing title—Oh, Uncle Add! What is it? Is my father—is he really—”
“My dear little girl, your father is dead, I am sorry to say. You must be very brave, and bear up. Be the brave woman he would want you to be.”
“I will, Uncle Add. But, oh, it is so hard! He was all I had! Oh, what made him die?”
She questioned almost as a little child might have done.
“That I don't know, my dear,” answered Dr. Lambert gently. “We shall have to find that out later by—Well, we'll find out later, Dr. Baird and I. You had better go home now. I'll have your car brought around. Is that—that Frenchman here—your chauffeur?”
“Yes, he was here a little while ago. But I had rather not go home with him—at least, unless some one else comes with me. I don't like—I don't like that big, new car.
“If you will come with me, Viola—” began Bartlett.
“Yes, Harry, I'll go with you. Oh, poor Aunt Mary! This will be a terrible shock to her. I—”
“I'll telephone,” offered Dr. Lambert. “She'll know when you arrive. And I'll be over to see you, Viola, as soon as I make some arrangements.”
“And will you look after—after poor father?”
“Yes, you may leave it all to me.”
And so, while the body of the dead clubman remained at the nineteenth hole, Viola Carwell was taken to 'The Haven' by Harry Bartlett, while Captain Poland, nodding farewell to LeGrand Blossom and some of his other friends, left the grounds in his gray car.
And as he rode down past the inlet where the tide was now running out to the sea, he saw an osprey dart down and strike at an unseen fish.
But the bird rose with dripping pinions, its talons empty.
“You didn't get any one that time!” murmured the captain.
CHAPTER III. “WHY?”
Through the silent house echoed the vibration of the electric bell, sounding unnecessarily loud, it seemed. The maid who answered took the caller's card to Miss Mary Carwell, Viola's aunt.
“He