With a low cry, smitten with awful understanding, Lanyard wheeled and stared fearfully at the door communicating with Roddy's room.
It stood ajar an inch or two, its splintered lock accounted for by a small but extremely efficient jointed steel jimmy which lay near the threshold.
Beyond the door … darkness … silence…
Mustering up all his courage, the adventurer strode determinedly into the adjoining room.
The first flash of his hand-lamp discovered to him sickening verification of his most dreadful apprehensions.
Now he saw why his dressing-gown had been requisitioned—to protect a butcher's clothing.
After a moment he returned, shut the door, and set his back against it, as if to bar out that reeking shambles.
He was very pale, his face drawn with horror; and he was powerfully shaken with nausea.
The plot was damnably patent: Roddy proving a menace to the Pack and requiring elimination, his murder had been decreed as well as that the blame for it should be laid at Lanyard's door. Hence the attempt to drug him, that he might not escape before police could be sent to find him there.
He could no longer doubt that De Morbihan had been left behind at the Circle of Friends of Harmony solely to detain him, if need be, and afford Smith time to finish his hideous job and set the trap for the second victim.