His voice echoed in a dreary fashion through the house, and seemed to come back at us. The first man had by this time touched a shelf which stood in the hall, and on which was a lamp. Looking about him sharply while he did so, he dexterously got a light and lit the lamp; then, with a glance at his companion, he stepped into the room which was the dining-room. It was empty.
I followed them from that room into the study, which again was empty. Then the first man, still carrying the lamp, after muttering something to his companion which I did not hear, began to ascend the stairs. I was the last of the trio, and I suddenly heard the first man cry out in an excited voice.
"Here, catch hold of this!" he exclaimed, passing the lamp down to the other man. "There's been an accident!"
I pressed forward then, and looked. Lying prone upon the staircase, with his head and shoulders hanging down over the top stairs, lay Uncle Zabdiel. Beside him was a heavy stick—that stick with which he had once threatened me—and his head and face were cruelly beaten in. Whoever had killed him had not been able to bear the sight of him afterwards, for the clothes from his bed had been dragged out of the room and pulled across him.
Uncle Zabdiel's dream had come true.
CHAPTER XIII.
"THAT'S THE MAN!"
Half-a-dozen surmises seemed to rush through my mind at that first sight of Uncle Zabdiel lying dead. The first—that he had tried to drive too hard a bargain with Bardolph Just, and had been caught in his own net; the next, that that badly-used youth, Andrew Ferkoe, had turned at last and killed his oppressor. I thought, too, that perhaps some poor creature he had driven to desperation, and ground hard in his money mill, had chosen this way to pay his debts.
One of the men ran off in what I thought was an absurd search for a doctor; the other stood waiting, and keeping, as I thought, a watchful eye upon me. In truth, I was not altogether comfortable, for although Uncle Zabdiel's lips were for ever sealed, I thought it possible that he might have made the bare statement that his supposedly-dead nephew was alive, in writing to the authorities. In which case, it might go hard with me that I should be seen in the neighbourhood of the house in which he had been so recently killed, and that house, too, with its front door open. The man had set down the lamp upon the landing, where it lighted up the dead man horribly; he now began to put a few questions to me.