As I opened the door and stood staring, the teamsters jumped as if they had been shot. But Billy only turned a stolid white face on me.
"My God, Mr. Stretton," he said, stolidly too, "what do you make of this?"
All I could see from where I stood was a rigid hand, that had said death to me the second I opened the door. I gave a sort of spring forward. What I thought was that here was the man who had left the blood in the swamp when Paulette's bullet hit him, and that I had got Collins. I had nearly burst out that he had what he deserved. But instead I stopped, paralyzed, where my spring had left me.
"My God," I said in my turn, "I don't know!"
For the man who lay in front of me, stone dead in water-soaked clothes that were frozen to his stark body, was Thompson, our old superintendent, who only six weeks ago had left the La Chance mine; whose letter to Dudley, with its careful, back-number copperplate address, lay in my pocket now.
"It's Thompson!" was the only thing I could say.