“All I know? A few words will do that. I left him last night sitting as usual at his library table, and found him this morning, seated in the same place, almost in the same position, but with a bullet-hole in his head as large as the end of my little finger.”
“Dead?”
“Stone-dead.”
“Horrible!” I exclaimed. Then, after a moment, “Could it have been a suicide?”
“No. The pistol with which the deed was committed is not to be found.”
“But if it was a murder, there must have been some motive. Mr. Leavenworth was too benevolent a man to have enemies, and if robbery was intended——”
“There was no robbery. There is nothing missing,” he again interrupted. “The whole affair is a mystery.”
“A mystery?”
“An utter mystery.”
Turning, I looked at my informant curiously. The inmate of a house in which a mysterious murder had occurred was rather an interesting object. But the good-featured and yet totally unimpressive countenance of the man beside me offered but little basis for even the wildest imagination to work upon, and, glancing almost immediately away, I asked: