The picture was large. Faversham picked his way round it. If
his thoughts had not been so entirely preoccupied, he would probably have
noticed a slight movement of something behind the portrait as he passed.
But exultation held him; he walked on air.
He returned to his own room, where the window was still wide open. As he
entered, he mechanically turned on the central light, not noticing that
the reading lamp upon his table was not in its place. But he saw that
some papers which had been on his desk when he left the room were now on
the floor. He supposed the wind which was rising had dislodged them.
Stooping to lift them up, he was surprised to see a large mud-stain on
the topmost sheet. It looked like a footprint, as though some one had
first knocked the papers off the table, and then trodden on them. He
turned on a fresh switch. There was another mark on the floor just beyond
the table--and another--nearer the door. They were certainly footprints!
But who could have entered the room during his absence? And where was the
invader? At the same time he perceived that his reading lamp had been
overturned and was lying on the floor, broken.
Filled with a vague anxiety, he returned to the door he had just closed.
As he laid his hand upon it, a shot rang through the house--a cry--the
sound of a fierce voice--a fall.
And the next minute the door he held was violently burst open in his
face, he himself was knocked backward over a chair, and a man carrying a
gun, whose face was muffled in some dark material, rushed across the
room, leapt through the window, and disappeared into the night.
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