Page:Richard Marsh--The goddess a demon.djvu/125

Rh it was the tell-tale stain upon the carpet. She was standing within a yard or two of the spot on which I had discovered Lawrence lying. His body was gone, but his blood remained behind—a lurid disfigurement of the handsome floorcloth. She started at it.

"What is it?" She stooped down; she touched it with her finger tips; an odd little tremor seemed to come into her voice. "It—it's dry. Why shouldn't it be dry? What—what is it?" Still stooping, she covered her face with her hands, as if struggling to rouse her dormant memory. "It seems to bring something back to me. Something—something horrid. What can it be? Oh!"

She started upright, with a little exclamation. A new look came on her face; a suggestion of fear, of horror. She was all at once on the alert, as if in expectation of something of which she had cause to be afraid.

"This is where Mr. Edwin Lawrence was killed—killed!" Again that look of puzzlement. "That means that he was—murdered! Murdered! He fell like that."

She made a sudden movement, as if to hurl herself headlong to the floor, which was so realistic that I started forward to save her from a fall. It was only a feint; in an instant she was back in her original position.