“I didn’t and Kito didn’t. He went away to see his only brother who is sick. He hasn’t got back. I don’t know who did it; but whoever stabbed him must have done it without warning him; for I didn’t hear a sound. I was in the library.”
“He’s breathing a little, I think,” murmured the young man, who was sopping the gray mask of a face while Winter trickled brandy drop by drop into the sagging mouth, “and—look! somebody has tried to rob him; that’s a money belt!”
The waistcoat was open and Winter could see, beneath, a money belt with buttoned pockets, which had been torn apart with such haste that one of the buttons had been wrenched off.
“They seem to have been after money,” said he; “see! the belt is full of bills; there’s only one pocket empty.”
“Perhaps he was interrupted,” explained Mercer. “Push the brandy, Colonel, he’s moving his eyelids, suh!”
“We’ve got to do something to that hole in him, first,” said the colonel. “Is there any doctor—”
“I daren’t send for one.”
“Tony Arnold might know one we could trust,” suggested Tracy. “I can get him over the long distance.”
“We want somebody now, this minute,” declared the colonel.
“There’s Janet Smith,” said Mercer, “my sister-in-law; she’s Mrs. Winter’s companion; she used to be a trained nurse and a mighty good one; she could be trusted.”