He had caught sight of the men who were seeking to detain him, and his haggard look and cringing form showed that he realized at last the terrors of his position.

Next minute he sought to escape, but Styles, gripping him more firmly, dragged him back to where Mr.Gryce stood beside the bearskin rug on which lay the form of his dead master.
Instantly, at the sight of this recumbent figure, another change took place in the entrapped butler.

Joy--that most hellish of passions in the presence of violence and death--illumined his wandering eye and distorted his mouth; and, seeking no disguise for the satisfaction he felt, he uttered a low but thrilling laugh, which rang in unholy echo through the room.
Mr.Gryce, moved in spite of himself by an abhorrence which the irresponsible condition of this man seemed only to emphasize, waited till the last faint sounds of this diabolical mirth had died away in the high recesses of the space above.

Then, fixing the glittering eye of this strange creature with his own, which, as we know, so seldom dwelt upon that of his fellow-beings, he sternly said: "There now! Speak! Who killed this man?
You were in the house with him, and should know." The butler's lips opened and a string of strange gutturals poured forth, while with his one disengaged hand (for the other was held to his side by Styles) he touched his ears and his lips, and violently shook his head.
There was but one interpretation to be given to this.

The man was deaf and dumb.
The shock of this discovery was too much for Styles.