Certainly I never suspected my host's word; but was even occupied in framing good resolutions and shaping out a reputable future, when I heard the front door gently pulled to, and a man's footsteps moving quietly to the gate.
The treachery knocked me in a heap for the moment.

Then, leaping up and flinging my door wide, I stumbled through the uncertain light of the passage into the front hall.

There was a fan-shaped light over the door, and the place was very still and grey.

A quick thought, or, rather, a sudden, prophetic guess at the truth, made me turn to the figure of the mastiff curled under the hall table.
I laid my hand on the scruff of his neck.

He was quite limp, and my fingers sank into the flesh on either side of the vertebrae.
Digging them deeper, I dragged him out into the middle of the hall and pulled the front door open to see the better.
His throat was gashed from ear to ear.
How many seconds passed after I dropped the senseless lump on the floor, and before I made another movement, it would puzzle me to say.