[CHAPTER XVI]
ACCUSATION
Grant was stunned. The vision of the figure with the fine patrician face there on the bed—in the breast the savage mark of violence—seemed but a part with the disordered fancies of recent hours. Beating of Benicia’s hands on the locked door and the faint sound of her calls aroused him. He stepped to the bedside and felt for a pulse, listened for a breath. There was none.
Murder had been done swiftly and surely—and done with the ancient dagger from the weapon cluster on the wall of his own room. In the stunning discovery he had just made Grant did not find any grim correlation between these two circumstances. He pulled up a coverlet to conceal ugly stains, then stepped to the door and unlocked it.
Benicia was waiting there. The eyes meeting his were blazing horror. Almost Grant read in them unthinkable accusation. He put out his hands to support her, for she was swaying in her effort over the doorstep.
“No—no!” Benicia shuddered and drew away from him as though he were a man unclean. Mystified, Grant stepped aside to let her pass. He saw her run to the side of the high bed and kneel there. Her hands went out blindly to grope for the still features on the pillow. They played uncertainly over them, then rested on the heavy mane of hair. Her fingers repeated little smoothing gestures. A breathless faltering of love phrases in the Spanish came from her lips. Grant, seeing that the girl retained mastery over herself, tiptoed from the chamber; it was not meet that he should be witness to a soul’s acceptance of the bitter fact of death.
He blundered into Bim coming back to the patio from his excursion at the head of servants beyond the great front door and told him what had happened; of the dagger dropped through the window and the murder. The big Arizonan reared back as if roweled.
“My God, man, that leaves the girl alone here in this jumping-off place!—With that snake Urgo in the offing. Boy, it’s up to us to help her out!”
Grant gripped his pal’s hand with a low, “I knew I could count on you, old scout.”