Page:Bat Wing 1921.djvu/179

Rh “Merciful God,” he said, “he is shot through the head.”

One glance I gave at the ghastly wound in the base of the Colonel’s skull, and then swayed backward in a sort of nausea. To see a man die in the heat of battle, a man one has known and called friend, is strange and terrible. Here in this moon-bathed Tudor garden it was a horror almost beyond my powers to endure.

Paul Harley, without touching the prone figure, stood up. Indeed no examination of the victim was necessary. A rifle bullet had pierced his brain, and he lay there dead with his head toward the hills.

I clutched at Harley’s shoulder, but he stood rigidly, staring up the slope past the angle of the tower, to where a gable of the Guest House jutted out from the trees.

“Did you hear—that cry?” I whispered, “immediately after the shot?”

“I heard it.”

A moment longer he stood fixedly watching, and then:

“Not a wisp of smoke,” he said. “You note the direction in which he was facing when he fell?”

He spoke in a stern and unnatural voice.

“I do. He must have turned half right when he came to the sun-dial.”

“Where were you when the shot was fired?”

“Running in this direction.”

“You saw no flash?”

“None.”

“Neither did I,” groaned Harley; “neither did I. And short of throwing a cordon round the hills what can be done? How can I move?”

He had somewhat relaxed, but now as I continued to clutch his arm, I felt the muscles grow rigid again.