"'Would you mind,' I was beginning; but at that instant a loud report sounded just outside the window. Lord Ashiel fell forward on to the table with a low cry, his hand clasped to his ribs. 'Oh, what is it?' I cried, bending over him; 'you are hurt; you are shot! Oh, what shall I do!' He was making a great effort to speak, I could see that plainly enough; but no words would come, and he seemed to be choking. At last he managed to get out a few words. 'Gimblet,' he gasped, 'the clock—eleven—steps—' and then with a groan his hand dropped from his side, his head rolled back upon the table, and a silence followed, more horrible to me than anything that had gone before.
"I saw now that his shirt was already soaked with blood; and, as in terror I called again upon his name, the dreadful truth was borne in upon me, and I knew that he was dead."
Juliet's voice failed her; she spoke the last few words in a quavering whisper, and if Gimblet had looked at her at that moment he would have beheld a countenance drawn and distorted by horror.
But he was very much occupied, and did not look up. With a notebook open on his knee, he was busily writing down what she had said.
"You are sure of the words?" he asked, as his pencil sped across the page. "'Gimblet—the clock—eleven—step,' is that it?"
His matter-of-fact voice soothed and reassured her. This little grey-haired man, sitting at her side, was somehow a very comfortable companion to one whose nerves were badly overwrought. Juliet pulled herself together.
"Steps," she corrected, and her voice sounded almost natural again.
"Not step."
"Do you suppose," asked the detective, "that he meant the English word, steps, or the Russian, steppes?"
"I don't know," said Juliet, surprised. "I never thought of it. But, Mr. Gimblet, I have not told anyone but you that he spoke after he was hit. I thought perhaps that he might have wished those last words of his to be kept private."
"Quite right," said Gimblet approvingly. "He did right to trust your discretion. And now, please, go on," he added, putting down his pencil; "what happened next?"