Strange he should be among the stragglers. At starting out he appeared the most zealous of all!
Then he was not thinking of the dog; had no idea how direct, and soon, the instinct of the animal would lead them to the spot where he had given Clancy his death shot.
The foremost of the searchers have dismounted and are standing grouped around it. He sees them, and would gladly go back, but dares not. Defection now would be damning evidence against him. After all, what has he to fear? They will find a dead body—Clancy’s—a corpse with a bullet-hole in the breast. They can’t tell who fired the fatal shot—how could they? There were no witnesses save the trunks of the cypresses, and the dumb brute of a dog—not so dumb but that it now makes the woods resound with its long-drawn continuous whining. If it could but shape this into articulate speech, then he might have to fear. As it is, he need not.
Fortified with these reflections, he approaches the spot, by himself made bloody. Trembling, nevertheless, and with cheeks pale. Not strange. He is about being brought face to face with the man he has murdered—with his corpse!
Nothing of the kind. There is no murdered man there, no corpse! Only a gun, a hat, and some blotches of crimson!
Does Darke rejoice at seeing only this? Judging by his looks, the reverse. Before, he only trembled slightly, with a hue of pallor on his cheeks. Now his lips show white, his eyes sunken in their sockets, while his teeth chatter and his whole frame shivers as if under an ague chill!
Luckily for the assassin this tale-telling exhibition occurs under the shadow of the great cypress, whose gloomy obscurity guards against its being observed. But to counteract this little bit of good luck there chances to be present a detective that trusts less to sight, than scent. This is Clancy’s dog. As Darke presents himself in the circle of searchers collected around it, the animal perceiving, suddenly springs towards him with the shrill cry of an enraged cat, and the elastic leap of a tiger!
But for Simeon Woodley seizing the hound, and holding it back, the throat of Richard Darke would be in danger.
It is so, notwithstanding.