Page:Weird Tales Volume 12 Issue 05 (1928-11).djvu/50

 He had risen to leave me, anger flaring from his eyes.

"Wait," I said, and a curious hesitation seemed to hold him. "The museum people sent me down there. They weren't satisfied with your explanation. I followed your trail to your last camp. It took me three days to find the cave—and the body. The spiders were there, but I managed to remove the body. And I found what you would have found had you recovered it. Seton was not killed by his fall or by the spiders. He had been shot through the brain with a bullet fired from a special 30-30 rifle."

a long time Graves gazed at me. I do not know whether anyone around us noticed him. I don't think so. His face—I could never describe it, but it was as grim as death. There was some mental struggle going on within. He seemed to be conscious of many aching sensibilities. To have gone wrong and to have been set right makes a double trial for man's vanity. The realization of his own weakness and unfaith had staggered him to the heart and increased the bitterness of surprize.

Finally he stuck out his hand and said: "Thanks, old man!" Then he was gone.

The next morning I received two telegrams, one to the effect that Graves was on his way to California and the other that Clara Seton had been taken into custody.

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