The body lay upon its back, with one arm bent, the hand across the chest, and the fingers spread wide. The face was that of a man of sixty or thereabouts, but, indeed, so deeply lined and wrinkled and pouched with evil living that the age even in life must have been hard to determine. Blood was coagulating about a bullet wound in the temple, and there were powder burns on the forehead. The shot had been fired at close range, evidently from the weapon with which I had been confronted on my entrance; and the sound had been so muffled in the curtain that it was little wonder that the servants in the rooms above, and across the house, had not heard it. He had a monstrous nose, that man upon the floor, and it must have been a red nose in life; but now it was of a bluish-white color, like the skin of an old and scrawny fowl. That, and the thin, drawn-up legs, and the big flabby paunch of the thing, robbed the sight, for me, of all the solemnity which (we are taught) exudes from the presence of death. It made me sick; and yet I cackled with sheer hysteria, too; or rather my strained nerves jarred and laughed, if not myself. It was too damned grotesque. Herself, she did not look at it. She looked at the man called Charles; and he, with a shudder, lifted his slow gaze from the thing behind the curtain to her face. She was the first to speak, and the terrible joy with which she had bade Charles to enter still dominated her accents. “Don't you understand, Charles? This man,” and she indicated me with the pistol, “this man takes the blame of this. He is a thief. He came just after--just afterwards. And I held him for your coming. Don't you see? Don't you see? His presence clears us of this deed!” “_Us?_” queried Charles. “Not _us?_” she asked. “My God, Katherine,” he burst forth, “why did you do this thing? And you would heap murder on murder! Why, why, why did you do it? Why splash this blood upon our love? A useless thing to do! We might have--we might have------” He broke down and sobbed. And then: “God knows the old man never did me any harm,” he said. “And she'd accuse the thief, too!” he cried a moment later, with a kind of wondering horror. “Listen, Charles,” she said, and moved towards him; and yet with a sidelong glance she still took heed of me. “Listen, and understand me. We must act quickly--but after it happened it was necessary that I should see you before we could act. This man came to rob; here is his pistol, and in that satchel by the window are his tools, no doubt. He may tell what wild tale he will; but who will believe him? You go as you came; I give him up--and we--we wait awhile, and then the rest of life is ours.”