So I left Whisky in his charge and grabbed a taxi. I had told Sam to get Whisky to a dog hospital as quickly as he could and then get back to our apartment pronto. Sam, when he saw how badly hurt Whisky was, became wildly angry and upset. I managed to convince him how important it was for him to return immediately to the apartment without actually telling him details.
It was about the longest ride I ever had in a taxi and I kept urging the driver to greater speed. I don’t know why but I had the jitters all right.
When I reached our apartment block I tossed the driver his money and ran up the steps.
A moment later I was standing inside our apartment and for some unaccountable reason I felt scared. There was the same eerie atmosphere that I felt when I found Quintl’s body. No sound came to me and I called Ansell in a voice that I hardly recognized as my own.
I walked cautiously into the kitchen and looked round. There was no one there. More assured, I returned to the living room. Maybe Doc and the girl had gone out. I was just going to have a look in the bedrooms when something caught my eye which brought me up with a jolt.
From under the sofa I could see something red. I knelt down and looked. It was Myra’s flame coloured dress. It had been screwed up into a bail and shoved under the sofa. This startled me for a moment. I hooked it out and stood up.
As I unfolded it I touched a wet, sticky patch and looking at my hand I found blood on it. Right down the front of the dress was a large bloodstain, still damp.
Just for a moment I thought that she’d been killed and it gave me a tremendous shock. But when I examined the dress there was no sign of a bullet hole or a slit from a knife. It looked as if the blood had come not from her but from someone else.
Throwing the dress aside I went upstairs and blundered into Ansell’s bedroom.
He lay across the bed. There was blood on the floor and on the walls. I hadn’t realized what a little guy he was until I saw him lying like that. The front of his coat was bloodstained and his face was blue-grey. Until I touched him I thought he was dead.