But this had not been enough to protect the venerable priest. The
murderer must have made his thrust at once and his victim had sunk
down dying on the floor of the room in which he had spent so many
hours of quiet study, in which he had brought comfort and given
advice to so many anxious hearts; for dying he must have been--it
would be impossible for a man to lose so much blood and live.

"The struggle," thought the detective, "but was there a struggle?"
He looked about the room again, but could see nothing that showed
disorder anywhere in its immaculate neatness. No, there could have
been no struggle. It must have been a quick knife thrust and death
at once. "Not a shot?" No, a shot would have been heard by the
night watchman walking the streets near the church. The night was
quiet, the window open. Some one in the village would have heard
the noise of a shot. And it was not likely that the old housekeeper
who slept in the room immediately below, slept the light sleep of
the aged would have failed to have heard the firing of a pistol.

Muller took a chair and sat down directly in front of the pool of
blood, looking at it carefully. Suddenly he bowed his head deeper.
He had caught sight of a fine thread of the red fluid which had
been drawn out for about a foot or two in the direction towards
the door to the dining-room. What did that mean? Did it mean that
the murderer went out through that door, dragging something after
him that made this delicate line? Muller bent down still deeper.
The sun shone brightly on the floor, sending its clear rays
obliquely through the window. The sharp eyes which now covered
every inch of the yellow-painted floor discovered something else.
They discovered that this red thread curved slightly and had a