Page:William Le Queux - The Czar's Spy.djvu/125

Rh another small pool of blood where the grass and ferns around are all crushed down as though there had been a struggle there."

"There may have been a struggle at that spot, and the man may have staggered some distance before he fell dead."

"Not if he had been struck in the heart, as they say. He would fall, would he not?" she suggested. "No. The police seem very dense, and this plain fact has not yet occurred to them. Their theory is the same as that you suggest, but my own is something quite different, Mr. Gregg. I believe that a second person also fell a victim," she added in low distinct tone.

I gazed at her open-mouthed. Did she, I wondered, know the actual truth? Was she aware that the woman who had fallen there had disappeared?

"A second person!" I echoed, as though in surprise. "Then do you believe that a double murder was committed?"

"I draw my conclusion from the fact that the young man, on being struck in the heart, could not have gone such a distance as that which separates the one mark from the other."

"But he might have been slightly wounded — on the hand, or in the face — at first, and then at the spot where he was found struck fatally," I suggested.

She shook her head dubiously, but made no reply to my argument. Her confidence in her own surmises made it quite apparent that by some unknown means she was aware of the second victim. Indeed, a few moments later she said to me —