John Inglesant saw all this as in a dream, and he saw besides creatures that were not real walking among the living men; haggard figures in long robes, and others beneath the grave shrouds, ghostly phantoms of his disordered brain. He made a desperate effort for the hundredth time to clear his sense of these terrible distracting sights, of this death of the brain that disabled all his faculties, and for the hundredth time in vain. It appeared to him—whether it was a vision or a reality, he did not know—that one of his brother’s servants came to his horse’s side, and told him something of a gentleman of his lady’s, a foreign physician, having met his master purposely, and that they were within together. Inglesant dismounted mechanically and entered the hotel, telling the servant to come with him. He had some dim feeling of dragging his brother away from a great danger, and a desire of gathering about him, if he could but distinguish them, such as would assist him and were of human flesh and blood. Inside the porch, and in the narrow hall beyond, the place swarmed with these distracting visions walking to and fro; the staircase at the farther end was crowded with them going up and down. He saw, as he thought, his brother, attended by a dark, handsome man, in the gown of a physician, come down the stairs to meet him, but when they came nearer they dissolved themselves and vanished into air. The host came to meet him, saying that his brother and the foreign gentleman were upstairs in the parlour; he had thought they were having some words a while ago, but they were quiet now. The whole house, Inglesant thought, was deadly quiet, though seemingly to him so full of life. To what terrible deed were all these strange witnesses and assistants summoned? He told the host to follow him, as he had told the man before; and he did so, supposing he meant to order something. They went up the two flights of the oak stairs, and entered the room over the hall and porch. It was a large and narrow room, and was seemingly empty. Opposite them, in the high window, and on the great carved chimney to the right, running greyhounds coursed each other, as it seemed to Inglesant, round the room. A long table hid the hearth as they came in. With a fatal certainty, as if mechanically, Inglesant walked round it towards the fire, the others with him; there they stopped—sudden and still. On the white hearthstone—his hair and clothes steeped in blood—lay Eustace Inglesant, the Italian’s stiletto in his heart. *CHAPTER XVII.* The sight of his brother’s corpse seemed to steady Inglesant’s nerves, and clear his brain. He turned to the host, and said, "What way can the murderer have escaped?"