“Good God! You’ve—why, you’ve killed her!”
Next second there sounded a rapid scuffling of feet, a chair was overturned and broken, and from the quick panting and muttered ejaculations it seemed as though two persons had closed in deadly embrace. In their frantic, desperate struggle they advanced into the room where I was, and I, still utterly helpless, with only a dark void about me, raised myself in horror and alarm. The man’s words held me appalled.
Some terrible tragedy had occurred. My kind protectress had been murdered.
The other two persons, whoever they were, fought fiercely quite close to me, and I could distinctly detect from the vain efforts to shout made by the weaker, that the stronger held him by the throat, and was endeavouring to strangle him.
Of a sudden there was a quick, dull thud, the unmistakable sound of a heavy blow, followed by a short agonised cry.
“Ah-h!” shrieked the voice of the person struck; and at the same instant a great weight fell back inertly upon me as I was lying, nearly crushing the breath from me.
I passed my sensitive hands over it quickly. It was the body of a man. Blood ran warm over my fingers.
He had been stabbed to the heart.