y and entered the old corridor.

"We'll see."

The others followed. Katherine was close to Bobby. He touched her hand.

"He's right, Katherine. No one's there. No one could have been there. You
mustn't give way like this. I'm depending on you--on your faith."

She pressed his hand, but her assurance didn't diminish.

The key scraped in the lock. They crowded through the doorway after
the detective. He struck a match and lighted the candle. He held it
over the bed. He sprang back with a sharp cry, unlike his level
quality, his confident conceit. He pointed. They all approximated his
helpless gesture, his blank amazement. For on the bed had occurred an
abominable change.

The body of Silas Blackburn no longer lay peacefully on its back. It had
been turned on its side, and remained in a stark and awkward attitude.
For the first time the back of the head was disclosed.

Their glances focussed there--on the tiny round hole at the base of the
brain, on the pillow where the head had rested and which they saw now was
stained with an ugly and irregular splotch of blood.

Bobby saw the candle quiver at last in the detective's hand. The man
strode to the door leading to the private hall and examined the lock.

"Both doors," he said, "were locked. There was no way in--"

He turned to the others, spreading his hands in justification. The
candle, which he seemed to have forgotten, cast gross, moving shadows
over his face and over the face of the dead man.

"At least you'll all grant me now that he was murdered."

They continued to stare at the body of Silas Blackburn. Cold for many
hours, it was as if he had made this atrocious revealing movement to
assure them that he had, indeed, been murdered; to expose to their
startled eyes the sly and deadly method.

CHAPTER III

HOWELLS DELIVERS HIMSELF TO THE ABANDONED ROOM

For a long time no one spoke. The body of Silas Blackburn had been alone
in a locked room, yet before their eyes it lay, turned on its side, as if
to inform them of the fashion of this murder. The tiny hole at the base
of the brain, the blood-stain on the pillow, which the head had
concealed, offered their mute and ghastly testimony.

Doctor Groom was the first to relax. He raised his great, hairy hand to
the bed-post and grasped it. His rumbling voice lacked its usual
authority. It vibrated with a childish wonder:

"I'm reminded that it isn't the first time there's been blood from a
man's head