trying to penetrate the mystery of the man's death. That he had not
once moved from the corner where he had been stationed; that his
posture was that of neither attack nor defense; that he had dropped
his weapon; that he had obviously perished of sheer horror of
something that he saw--these were circumstances which Mr. King's
disturbed intelligence could not rightly comprehend.

Groping in intellectual darkness for a clew to his maze of doubt, his
gaze, directed mechanically downward in the way of one who ponders
momentous matters, fell upon something which, there, in the light of
day and in the presence of living companions, affected him with
terror. In the dust of years that lay thick upon the floor--leading
from the door by which they had entered, straight across the room to
within a yard of Manton's crouching corpse--were three parallel lines
of footprints--light but definite impressions of bare feet, the outer
ones those of small children, the inner a woman's. From the point at
which they ended they did not return; they pointed all one way.
Brewer, who had observed them at the same moment, was leaning forward
in an attitude of rapt attention, horribly pale.

"Look at that!" he cried, pointing with both hands at the nearest
print of the woman's right foot, where she had apparently stopped and
stood. "The middle toe is missing--it was Gertrude!"

Gertrude was the late Mrs. Manton, sister to Mr. Brewer.



JOHN MORTONSON'S FUNERAL {1}