STILLMAN'S THEORY
There were four good-sized windows in the show room, all overlooking the street. It was a large, square place, and, as Miss Vale had said, literally stuffed with odd carvings, pottery of a most freakish sort, and weird bric-a-brac. Two large modern safes stood at one side, behind a long show case spread with ancient coins. At the end of this case was a carpeted space, railed in and furnished with a great flat-topped desk. Upon the floor at the foot of the desk, and with three separate streams of blood creeping away from it, lay the huddled, ghastly figure of a man.
Pendleton, though he had been warned, felt his breath catch and his skin grow cold and damp.
"Heavens!" said he, under his breath. "It's the man whose picture we saw inside there on the wall."
Even the shock of death could not, so it seemed, drive the sneer from the thick lips; mockery was frozen in the dead eyes.
"What a beast he must have been," went on Pendleton. "Like a satyr. I don't think I ever saw just that type of face before."
Ashton-Kirk was bending over the body; suddenly he raised himself.
"There is a heavy bruise on the forehead," said he. "He was felled first; then bayoneted."
"Bayoneted!" Pendleton peered at the body.
"There it is, sticking from his chest." Ashton-Kirk drew aside the breast of the dead man's coat and his companion caught sight of a bronze hilt. The broad, sword-like blade had been driven completely home.