By turning his head he could see the timepiece on the bureau. It was nine o’clock, an hour and a half past his usual time for rising. But, late as it was, he felt a strange disinclination for getting up. He felt as if he could lie there all day without moving. His mind was perfectly clear; the pain had left his head; but his limbs seemed heavy, useless, inert. He would stay there for just ten minutes longer, he said to himself, and then he would positively get up. Kester would be waiting breakfast for him, and he was anxious to know how Osmond was this morning, and what recollection he retained of the fracas overnight.
But Osmond was up already. He could hear him moving about the next room. So far all was well. But what would be the result of their quarrel? Osmond must leave Park Newton, and at once. No other course was—— Now that he listened more particularly, he could hear the footsteps of more than one person in the next room—of more than two—of several. And there were footsteps in the corridor, passing to and fro as if in a hurry. There was a whispering, too, as if close outside his door; then the hurried muttering of many voices in Osmond’s room; then the clash of two doors far away in the opposite wing of the house.
What could it all mean? Was Osmond ill? Or was he simply having his luggage packed, with the view of leaving for London by the forenoon train? Lionel sprang to his feet without another moment’s delay. The sudden change of position made him dizzy. He pressed his fingers over both his eyes for a moment or two while he recovered himself. Again there was a noise of whispering in the corridor outside. Lionel made a step or two forward towards the door, and then came to a dead stop—horror-stricken by something which he now saw for the first time. The pocket-handkerchief which he had stuffed carelessly under his braces overnight had fallen to the ground when he sprang from the couch. As he stooped to pick it up, he saw that it was stained with blood. But whose blood? It could not be his own—there was nothing the matter with him. But if not his, whose?
Now that he looked at himself more closely, there were crimson streaks on the front of his shirt where the handkerchief had rested against it—and on his wristbands there were other streaks of the same ominous colour.
He had picked up the handkerchief, and was gazing at it in a sort of maze of dread and perplexity, when there came a sudden imperative knocking at his dressing-room door. Next moment the door was opened, and, lifting up his bewildered eyes, Lionel saw clustered in the doorway the frightened faces of five or six of his own servants.
“What is the matter?” he asked, and his voice sounded strangely unfamiliar both to himself and others.
“Oh, if you please, sir—Mr. Osmond—the gentleman in the next room!” gasped Pearce the butler.
“What is the matter with Mr. Osmond?”
“He has been murdered in the dead of night!”
Lionel caught at the edge of a table for support. His brain reeled—all the pulses of his being seemed to stand still in awful dread.