Page:Richard Marsh--The goddess a demon.djvu/78

66 "I know that you were in his room when he was being killed."

"You know that I was in his room!"

"I suspected it at first Now I know it. I will tell you how. A girl, one of the servants of the place, just stopped me to say that, at an early hour this morning—so far as I can judge, within five minutes of the commission of the murder—she saw you running along the corridor, from Lawrence's room towards your own, as if you were flying for your life. My own impression is that you were flying from the life which you had taken."

"Hume! Some one saw me in the corridor! Who was it?"

"At this moment, never mind. The woman will be produced in due course. She says that the perspiration was pouring down your cheeks; which seems odd, considering that the morning was chilly, that you are not of a plethoric habit, and that you were clad only in your pyjamas."

It was with difficulty that I retained my self-control. Was it possible that it had not been a vision after all, but that I had been the actual spectator of that awful tragedy?

As I was endeavouring to arrange in my mind the new aspect of the case suggested by Hume's words, the door opened and a man came in.