The grass around bore distinct marks of a desperate struggle, and from the position in which the young man was lying, it seemed as though, being struck suddenly, he had stumbled, fallen forward, and expired.
“He’s been murdered, sir, without a doubt,” exclaimed Warr, at last breaking the silence. “I thought you said you heard a woman’s voice?”
“So I did,” I replied, much puzzled at the discovery, for, to tell the truth, I had half-expected to find Lolita herself. Even at that moment I could have sworn that the cry was hers. “It seems, however, that I must have been mistaken.”
“But who can he be?” exclaimed the innkeeper. “He’s an utter stranger to me. I’ve certainly never seen him in Sibberton.”
“Neither have I,” was my response. “There’s some deep mystery here, depend upon it,” I added, recollecting all that Lolita had so strangely told me earlier in the evening.
“And my own opinion is that the fellow who called at my house this evening—Mr Richard Keene, as he said his name was—has had a hand in it,” Warr declared as he looked across at me, still kneeling by the young man’s body.
“Well, it certainly seems suspiciously like it. Both men are entire strangers, that’s evident.”
In order to ascertain whether there was not a spark of life still left, I undid the poor fellow’s vest and placed my hand upon his heart. There was, however, no movement. The blow had been struck with an unerring hand, while the weapon had been withdrawn and carried away by the assassin.
He was well-dressed, dark-haired, with an aquiline and somewhat refined countenance. He wore a slight, dark moustache, and I judged his age to be about twenty-three. His blue serge suit was of fine quality, but was evidently of foreign cut, and his boots were also of foreign shape and make. His hands, I felt, were soft, as though unused to work, yet where he lay, in that damp hollow, I was unable to search his clothes properly to discover a clue to his identity.
The spot where he had been attacked had certainly been chosen by some one well acquainted with the park. The hollow, once an old gravel-pit, but now overgrown with grass, was screened by the trees of the avenue, so that any one in it would be entirely hidden from view, even in broad daylight. Therefore it struck me that the unfortunate victim had been enticed there by the assassin, and foully done to death.