While the shepherd and the boy walked toward the inn, the old doctor and
Liska had hurried onward to the rectory. They were met at the door by
the aged housekeeper, who staggered down the path wringing her hands,
unable to give voice to anything but inarticulate expressions of grief
and terror. The rest of the household and the farm hands were gathered
in a frightened group in the great courtyard of the stately rectory
which had once been a convent building. The physician hurried up the
stairs into the pastor's apartments. These were high sunny and airy
rooms with arched ceilings, deep window seats, great heavy doors and
handsomely ornamented stoves. The simple modern furniture appeared still
more plain and common-place by contrast with the huge spaces of the
building.

In one of the rooms a gendarme was standing beside the window. The man
saluted the physician, then shrugged his shoulders with an expression of
hopelessness. The doctor returned a silent greeting and passed through
into the next apartment. The old man was paler than usual and his face
bore an expression of pain and surprise, the same expression that showed
in the faces of those gathered downstairs. The room he now entered was
large like the others, the walls handsomely decorated, and every corner
of it was flooded with sunshine. There were two men in this room, the
village magistrate and the notary. Their expression, as they held out
their hands to the doctor, showed that his coming brought great relief.
And there was something else in the room, something that drew the eyes
of all three of the men immediately after their silent greeting.

This was a great pool of blood which lay as a hideous stain on the
otherwise clean yellow-painted floor. The blood must have flowed from
a dreadful wound, from a severed artery even, the doctor thought, there
was such a quantity of it. It had already dried and darkened, making its
terrifying ugliness the more apparent.

"This is the third murder in two years," said the magistrate in a low
voice.

"And the most mysterious of all of them," added the clerk.

"Yes, it is," said the doctor. "And there is not a trace of the body,
you say?--or a clue as to where they might have taken the dead--or dying
man?"

With these words he looked carefully around the room, but there was no
more blood to be seen anywhere. Any spot would have been clearly visible
on the light-coloured floor. There was nothing else to tell of the
ho