Trask had taken down the volume that had been on Doctor Waring’s desk the night of his death. As he flipped over the pages, two were stuck together, and the ghastly red stains showed only too clearly that they were the spilled blood of the dying man.
“Ugh!” he said, holding out the volume to Lockwood, “burn that up. How could anyone have put it back on the shelf? Never let me see it again!”
The secretary took it, noting that it was a copy of Martial, to which Doctor Waring had been greatly attached. Indeed, it had, to Lockwood’s knowledge, been lying on the Doctor’s desk for a week or more before his death.
Laying the stained volume aside in his own desk, Lockwood proceeded to assist in the examination of the books.
He was not at all surprised to find Trask discarding the ones he would have retained and keeping the most worthless—though there was little that could really be called trash in the Waring library.
“Where are the story books?” the new owner grumbled. “No detective stories? No spicy novels? No joke-books?”
“Doctor Waring was serious-minded,” Lockwood reminded him. “He cared little for lighter reading. He was a scholar.”
“He sure was—to judge from these old dry-as-dust tomes. But, I’ll fire a lot of the poky old stuff, and so make room for more entertaining books. You see, Lockwood, I hope—and I expect to get me a wife before long.”
Gordon’s heart seemed to contract, for he divined what was coming.
“Yeppy, that’s so. Little Old Maurice wants a wifie—and—who do you suppose has caught my fancy?”