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Updated: May 31, 2025
No clue presented itself; and my detailed examination of the body availed me nothing. The grey herald of dawn was come when the police arrived with the ambulance and took Forsyth away. I was just taking my cap from the rack when Nayland Smith returned. "Smith!" I cried, "have you found anything?" He stood there in the grey light of the hall-way tugging at the lobe of his left ear.
"I met my brother in the hall-way; he said Herbert was ill, and I accused him of trying to injure the boy that he might defraud me. Sharp words passed between us.
I have much to attend to. If you and the chaplain will meet me at ten o'clock, we can settle various matters. Meantime I'll lock these papers in my desk." Across the dim hall-way, as the two friends left the office, stood the door of the sanctum of the post commander. It was just ajar, but there was no light beyond, and to all appearances the room was as deserted as it was dark.
Neither had heard its latch click nor seen it open, but the broad figure of a burly man was massed in the gloom against the greater light from the outer entrance. A passing torch, flaring up the hall-way from behind, showed him draped from throat to ankle in some self-coloured, russet-red, woollen stuff which caught the glare, and outlined him for the moment as with sweeping curves of blood.
I had a vague impression of Nayland Smith's face beside me, the eyes glassy with a fearful apprehension. Then the door was flung open, and, in the bright light of the hall-way, I saw Slattin standing swaying and seemingly fighting with the empty air. "What is it? For God's sake, what has happened?" reached my ears dimly and the man Burke showed behind his master.
Then he crushed the paper in his hand and looked sharply at Sam. "Samuel, was the party you saw in the hall-way tall and slim?" "Rather tall, yes, sir." "And slim?" "Well, he wasn't fat." "Did you see his face?" "No; it was too dark for that, and, besides, he had that shawl, or whatever it was, pretty well up around him." "Did you notice how he walked?" "He moved on tiptoes."
And the tired man turned to the daughter who for his sake had left ease and beauty and friends, and shifted to her shoulders the burden which he found too heavy for his own. The children crowded to meet her as she stumbled through the narrow hall-way into the kitchen. How dark it was!
Thence the tracks led around to the back of the house. Returning to his gate and hall-way, Davies tiptoed noiselessly through the little dining-room to the kitchen in the shed at the back. There Barnickel was sleepily starting a fire, and the door leading into his little den farther back discovered the soldier blankets of his bunk tumbled over as though he had just arisen.
As he moved through the hall-way, the five people whom Theron had seen waiting rose from their bench, and two of the women began in humble murmurs, "If you please, Father," and "Good-evening to your Riverence;" but the priest merely nodded and passed on up the staircase, followed by his guests. The people sat down on their bench again.
At that instant Li Choo slid softly into the room, caught up the tray, poised it on his three fingers over his head and said: "Old Mazaline, he come. Be queeck!" They heard the heavy footsteps of Joel Mazarine coming into the hall-way just below. The old man, as though moved by some uncanny instinct, had come back from One Mile Spring by a roundabout trail.
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