The blood was dark and was quite dry, and he could not find any scratch to account for it.

It was on the inner side of his right hand, between the thumb and forefinger, and was no larger than an ordinary watch.
'How very odd!' exclaimed Mr.Griggs aloud; and he turned his hand this way and that under the electric lamp, looking for some small wound which he supposed must have bled.

There was a little more inside his fingers, and between them, as if it had oozed through and then had spread over his knuckles.
But he could find nothing to account for it.

He was an elderly man who had lived all over the world and had seen most things, and he was not easily surprised, but he was puzzled now.

Not the least strange thing was that the stain should be as small as it was and yet so dark.