He was lolling back in his chair
like one asleep, and yet--was this sleep?
Something in his attitude, something in the appalling stillness of
that lolling figure, something in the utter quiet of the whole place,
filled Barnabas with a nameless, growing horror. He took a step
nearer, another, and another--then stopped and, uttering a choking
gasp, fell back to the wall and leaned there suddenly faint and sick.
For, indeed, this was more than sleep. Jasper Gaunt lolled there, a
horrid, bedabbled thing, with his head at a hideous angle and the
dagger, which had been wont to glitter so evilly from the wall,
smitten sideways through his throat.
Barnabas crouched against the wall, his gaze riveted by the dull
gleam of the steel; and upon the silence, now, there crept another
sound soft and regular, a small, dull, plashing sound; and, knowing
what it was, he closed his eyes and the faintness grew upon him. At
length he sighed and, shuddering, lifted his head and moved a
backward step toward the door; thus it was he chanced to see Jasper
Gaunt's right hand--that white, carefully-tended right hand, whose
long, smooth fingers had clenched themselves even tighter in death
than they had done in life.
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