I ESCAPE FROM THE JEW'S HOUSE.
It was Mr. Rodriguez. He lay face downward and slantwise across the front of the hearth, with arms spread, fingers hooked, and his neck protruding from the collar of his dingy dressing-gown like a plucked fowl's. He had cast a slipper in falling, and the flesh of one heel showed through its rent stocking. For a moment I supposed him in a fit; the next, I was recoiling towards the wall, away from a dark moist line which ran from under his left armpit and along the uneven boards to the far corner by the window, and there, under a disordered truckle-bed, spread itself in a pool.
With my eyes glued upon this horrid sight I slowly straightened myself up—having crouched back until I felt the wall behind me—and so grew aware of a door beside the chimney-breast, and that it stood ajar upon the empty landing. The dead man's heels pointed towards it, his head towards the window at the foot of the bed.
And still my shaken wits could not clutch at the meaning of what I saw. I only felt that there was something horrible, menacing, hideously malignant in the figure at my feet: only craved for strength of will to dash by it, reach the door and fling myself down the stairs—anywhere—away from it. Had it stirred, I believe it had then and there destroyed my reason.
But it did not stir. And all the while I knew that the thing lay with its breast in a bath of blood; that it had been stabbed in the back and the blood welling down under the clothes had gathered in a pool, ready to gush and spread on all sides as soon as the body should be lifted or its attitude interfered with. I cannot tell how I found time to reason this out; but I did.
I knew, too, that I could not scream aloud if I tried: but I had no desire to try. It might wake and lift up its head! I felt backwards with my hand along the wall, groping unconsciously for something to aid my spring towards the door; but desisted. For the moment I could not lift a foot.
With that—either this was all a dream or I heard footsteps on the flat roof outside; very slow, soft footsteps, too, as of somebody walking on tiptoe. But if on tiptoe, why was he coming towards me? Yet so it was; my ear told me distinctly.
As his feet crunched the leads close outside the window I caught a gleam of scarlet; then the frame grew dark between me and the daylight, and through the pane a man peered cautiously into the room.
It was Archibald Plinlimmon.
He peered in, turning his face sideways for a better view and shading it, after a moment, with his hand. So shaded, and with the daylight behind it, his face after that first instant became an inscrutable blur.