Then he stooped to look at the small revolver lying alongside, but did not touch it.

Again he bent over the corpse, this time with more composure in his glance.
The object on which the outstretched arms rested was an old Dutch hood clock, which had fallen or been dragged from a niche in the wall, and lay face uppermost, the glass case open and smashed, the hands: stopped at the hour of half-past nine.

It was a clock of the seventeenth century, of a design still to be found occasionally in old English houses.

A landscape scene was painted in the arch above the dial, showing the moon above a wood, in a sky crowded with stars.

The moon was depicted as a human face, with eyes which moved in response to the swing of the pendulum.