evening about nine o'clock
With them were four or five newspaper correspondents and several neighbors . Dr. Bruce and the Bishop met this miscellaneous crowd at the head of the stairs and succeeded in excluding all except those whose presence was necessary . With these the two friends learned all the facts ever known about the `` Sterling tragedy , '' as the papers in their sensational accounts next day called it . Mr. Sterling had gone into his room that evening about nine o'clock and that was the last seen of him until , in half an hour , a shot was heard in the room , and a servant who was in the hall ran into the room and found him dead on the floor , killed by his own hand . Felicia at the time was sitting by her mother . Rose was reading in the library . She ran upstairs , saw her father as he was being lifted upon the couch by the servants , and then ran screaming into her mother 's room , where she flung herself down at the foot of the bed in a swoon .