“We’ll just take a look around,” said Donnelly.
He opened a door beside him, revealing a dark and empty room. He flashed an electric torch across it; nothing there but the bare floor and the four walls. He closed the door and went along the passage, and opened the door of the next room. The shutter was broken here, and one of the window panes, and the rain was blowing in, making a pool on the floor that gleamed darkly when the flash light touched it.
That door, too, he closed, with a sort of polite caution, as if he didn’t want to disturb any one. Then he looked into the room at the end of the passage. This was evidently the kitchen, for there was a sink there, and a built-in dresser. He turned on the taps; no water.
“Now we’ll just take a look upstairs,” he said, in a subdued tone.
He mounted the stairs with remarkable lightness for so heavy a man; but Ross took no such precaution. Indeed, he wanted to make a noise. He did not like the silence in this house.
Donnelly opened the door facing the stairs. One shutter had been thrown back, and the room was filled with the gray light of the rainy afternoon. And, lying on the floor, Ross saw a white flannel rabbit.
It lay there, quite alone, its one pink glass eye staring up at the ceiling, and round its middle was a bedraggled bit of blue ribbon which Ross remembered very well.
“Now, what’s this?” said Donnelly.
He picked up the rabbit, frowning a little; he turned it this way and that, he fingered its sash. And, to Ross, there was something grotesque and almost horrible in the sight of the burly fellow with a cigar in one corner of his mouth, and an intent frown on his red face, holding that rabbit.
“It’s a clew, isn’t it?” he inquired, with mock respect.