"Are you sure?"
"I saw him go," said I. My heart was beating horribly. I would
not trust myself to speak again. But I wormed my way to a front
place in the little procession, and was, in fact, the second man
to cross the threshold that had been the Rubicon of my life. As
I did so I uttered a cry of pain, for Mackenzie had trod back
heavily on my toes; in another second I saw the reason, and saw
it with another and a louder cry.
A man was lying at full length before the fire on his back, with
a little wound in the white forehead, and the blood draining into
his eyes. And the man was Raffles himself!
"Suicide," said Mackenzie calmly. "No--here's the poker--looks
more like murder." He went on his knees and shook his head quite
cheerfully. "An' it's not even murder," said he, with a shade of
disgust in his matter-of-fact voice; "yon's no more than a
flesh-wound, and I have my doubts whether it felled him; but,
sirs, he just stinks o' chloryform!"
He got up and fixed his keen gray eyes upon me; my own were full
of tears, but they faced him unashamed.
"I understood ye to say ye saw him go out?" said he sternly.
"I saw that long driving-coat; of course, I thought he was inside
it."
"And I could ha' sworn it was the same gent when he give me the
key!"
It was the disconsolate voice of the constable in the background;
on him turned Mackenzie, white to the lips.
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