I was scarcely sure this last was not a vision of my half-mad brain, but a fourth match revealed it all--above the murdered Coombs, hidden beneath blankets, was the body of the strange man shot in the upper room.

My God! the place was a charnel house! a spot accursed! I crept back from that ghastly scene of death as though invisible hands gripped my throat.

I fairly choked with the unutterable horror which overcame me.

And yet I knew I must act, must go on to the end.

Even as I crouched there, trembling and unmanned, seeing visions in the darkness, hearing imaginary sounds, my thought leaped back to the girl upstairs.