Chapter 13
"I THOUGHT I HEARD SOMETHING"
"What," I asked, "is the first thing to do now?"
"Find the spot where Rhoda Dillingham was killed. The snowfall of the day before yesterday covered the stains, of course. I feel confident, however, what with the description that Victor Boileau gave me, that I shall recognize the spot the moment I see it. It's over there on the other side, Bill, in the sunlight."
"Why that precise spot?"
"Because I hope to find something there—something that Victor Boileau himself didn't see."
A cold shiver went through my heart. We were so near now. Yes, so near; but near to what? Or had we come too late?
"Now for it, Bill!" said Milton Rhodes.
He turned and began to work his way down along the base of the rock-wall. The ice now sloped steeply, and, from there to the end of the frowning mass of rocks, and for some distance beyond it, the glacier was fissured and split in all directions. The going was really difficult. Had we tried it without the creepers, we should have broken our necks. One consolation was that the distance was a short one. Why on earth had the artist brought his daughter to this awful place?
But, then, there had been nothing terrible about the scene to Dillingham, until the tragedy. As for the appearance of the rocks—yes, I had to acknowledge that—there was nothing intrinsically terrible about it: it was what one knew that made it so. Its sinister, its awful seeming would not have been there had I not known what had happened.