rection in the hope of flight, for there was nothing
here to give him shelter, no weapon that he could grasp, not even
a cane. He must have turned in this direction to meet and greet the
invader who had entered his room in this unusual manner. Turned to meet
him as a brave man would, with no other weapon than the sacredness of
his calling and his age.

But this had not been enough to protect the venerable priest. The
murderer must have made his thrust at once and his victim had sunk down
dying on the floor of the room in which he had spent so many hours of
quiet study, in which he had brought comfort and given advice to so many
anxious hearts; for dying he must have been--it would be impossible for
a man to lose so much blood and live.

"The struggle," thought the detective, "but was there a struggle?" He
looked about the room again, but could see nothing that showed disorder
anywhere in its immaculate neatness. No, there could have been no
struggle. It must have been a quick knife thrust and death at once. "Not
a shot?" No, a shot would have been heard by the night watchman walking
the streets near the church. The night was quiet, the window open. Some
one in the village would have heard the noise of a shot. And it was not
likely that the old housekeeper who slept in the room immediately below,
slept the light sleep of the aged would have failed to have heard the
firing of a pistol.

Muller took a chair and sat down directly in front of the pool of blood,
looking at it carefully. Suddenly he bowed his head deeper. He had
caught sight of a fine thread of the red fluid which had been drawn
out for about a foot or two in the direction towards the door to the
dining-room. What did that mean? Did it mean that the murderer went out
through that door, dragging something after him that made this delicate
line? Muller bent down still deeper. The sun shone brightly on the
floor, sending its clear rays obliquely through the window. The sharp
eyes which now covered every inch of the yellow-painted floor discovered
something else. They discovered that this red thread curved slightly and
had a continuation in a fine scratch in the paint of the floor. Muller
followed up this scratch and it led him over towards the window and then
back again in wide curves, then out again under the desk and finally,
growing weaker and weaker, it came back to the neighbourhood of the pool
of blood, but on the opposite side of it. Muller got down on h