There sat Colonel Conrad by the table, his head bowed over on it, motionless, and apparently asleep. The lamp stood beside him, burning brightly.
Carlos looked earnestly in at the figure of his uncle, debating what step to take next. Should he speak or depart, silently as he had come, leaving him to awake at his leisure?
But even as he looked something sent a choking, sickening sensation through him. He gasped for breath, and nearly fainted away, as he saw on the floor beside his uncle a dark-red pool.
It lay there, a glistening, horrible, fascinating puddle. Carlos stood rooted to the spot, for the moment thrown into a dumb, helpless lethargy. But the spell passed from him, and he suddenly roused himself into action.
He sprang into the room, approached his uncle, and touched his shoulder. The figure moved not. Carlos shivered from head to foot. Then he looked about him furtively. He stepped around to the other side of the motionlessform, and saw in the neck a bloody wound, as if from a single vigorous deep thrust of a dagger. All this was so sudden and so awful that he could not realize its horror for the time being.
HE STEPPED AROUND TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MOTIONLESS FORM.
Again he walked around to the other side of the table. The face of the dead body was bent over, out of sight; one arm was extended out straight, and the other was bent and the fingers clutched tightly together. Carlos could see that within this hand was a fragment of white paper. He seized hold of the fingers, not yet cold and stiff, and unclasped them. The paper was crumpled and wrinkled from the tightness with which it had been grasped. Carlos straightened it out, pulled it smooth, and examined it. It was irregular in shape, with two edges smooth and the other rough and jagged, as if it had been torn from a sheet. On it were two words, in the colonel’s handwriting. The paper and the writing were as follows:
On the table was an envelope, addressed as follows:
“TIMOTHY TIBBS, Esq.,
“Att’y,
“Dalton.”
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