stone shed.

"Lock the door again, constable," he ordered; "no one is to be
admitted."

Thereupon I looked about me, and the scene which I beheld was so
strange and gruesome that its every detail remains imprinted upon my
memory.

The building then was lighted by four barred windows set so high in
the walls that no one could look in from the outside. Blazing sunlight
poured in at the two southerly windows and drew a sharp black pattern
of the bars across the paved floor. Kneeling beside a stretcher, fully
in this path of light, so that he presented a curious striped
appearance, was a man who presently proved to be the divisional
surgeon, and two paces beyond stood a police inspector who was engaged
at the moment of our entrance in making entries in his note-book.

On the stretcher, so covered up that only his face was visible, lay
one whom at first I failed to recognize, for the horribly contorted
features presented a kind of mottled green appearance utterly
indescribable.

Stifling an exclamation of horror, I stared and stared at that ghastly
face, then:

"My God!" I muttered. "Yes! it _is_ Sir Marcus!"

The surgeon stood up and the inspector advanced to meet Gatton, but my
horrified gaze had strayed from the stretcher to a badly damaged and