Near the packing-case a hammer and some nails lay on the floor and the lid was in position but was not fastened, as though some interruption had occurred before the task of nailing it down could be completed.
Dunn noted that one nail had been driven home, and he was on the point of leaving the attic, for he knew he had not much time and hoped that downstairs he would be able to make some discoveries of importance, when it occurred to him that it might be wise to see what was in this case, the nailing down the lid of which had not been completed.
He crossed the room to it, and without drawing the one nail, pushed back the lid which pivoted on it quite easily.
Within appeared a covering of coarse sacking. He pulled this away with a careless hand, and beneath the beam of his electric torch showed the pale and dreadful features of a dead man—of a man, the center of whose forehead showed the small round hole where a bullet had entered in; of a man whose still-recognizable features were those of the photograph on the mantel-piece of the room downstairs, the photograph that was signed:
“Devotedly yours,
Charley Wright.”
For a long time Robert Dunn stood, looking down in silence at that dead face which was hardly more still, more rigid than his own.
He shivered, for he felt very cold. It was as though the coldness of the death in whose presence he stood had laid its chilly hand on him also.
At last he stirred and looked about him with a bewildered air, then carefully and with a reverent hand, he put back the sackcloth covering.
“So I've found you, Charley,” he whispered. “Found you at last.”
He replaced the lid, leaving everything as it had been when he entered the attic, and stood for a time, trying to collect his thoughts which the shock of this dreadful discovery had so disordered, and to decide what to do next.