top of a pair of socks, had been stuffed into the hinder end on top of
a pair of underdrawers. Which underdrawers should by rights have been
at the bottom of the leather hold-all.

But there was something else at the bottom of the saddlebag. It was
something long and hard and wrapped in the buttonless undershirt
despised and rejected by Swing.

Racey unrolled the undershirt. His eyes stared in genuine horror at
what the unrolling revealed. It was the commonest of butcher knives
that someone's busy hand had wrapped in the undershirt. But what was
not nearly so common was that the broad, thin blade was stained with
blood. From point to haft the steel was as red as if it had been
dipped in a pail of paint. Indeed, being dry, it looked not unlike
paint. But Racey knew that it was not paint.

"It was dry before it was wrapped in that undershirt," he said to
himself, testing the blood on the blade with a speculative fingernail.
"There ain't a mark on the undershirt. Gawd! Here it is again--the
earmark of a crime, and no crime--yet. This is getting monotonous."

He laid down the knife, settled his hat, and methodically searched
Swing Tunstall's warbags. It turned out a needless precaution. He had
felt that it would be. But he could not afford to take any risks.
Having found nothing in Swing's warbags save his friend's personal
belongings, Racey slid the knife up his sleeve and went downstairs to
breakfast. On the way he stopped a moment at a fortuitous knothole in
the board wall. When he passed on his way the knife was no longer with
him.