Page:Richard Marsh--The goddess a demon.djvu/46

34 was the face of one I knew. I put that in my pocket also with the gloves.

The room was in some disarray, but not in such disorder as to suggest that a desperate struggle had taken place. A chair or two and a table were not in the places in which I knew they generally stood; the table on which we had played that game of cards last night was pushed up against another, on which were some copper vases. A revolving bookcase had been driven up against the fireplace. On the woodwork were gouts of blood. There was a blotch on the back of one of the books—a volume of Rudyard Kipling's "Many Inventions." On the edge of the white stone mantelpiece was the mark of where a hand had rested—a blood-stained hand. Something lay on the carpet, perhaps two yards away from the dead man's feet. I took it up. It was a collar—a man's collar—shapeless and twisted and stiff with coagulated blood. As I stared at it a wild wonder began to take shape and to grow in my brain.

"Ferguson, what's the matter? What's this Atkins tells me about. Good God! is that Lawrence?"

It was Dr. Hume who spoke. He had come into the room while I was staring at the collar.

Graham Hume is a man who has taken high medical honours; but, having ample private