Chicot pointed with a trembling hand to a thin thread of crimson that had crept along the dull grey carpet to the very threshold. Shudderingly the others looked inside, as he held the candle towards the bed, with white, averted face. There were hideous stains on the counterpane, an awful figure lying in a heap among the bed-clothes, a long loose coil of raven hair, curved like a snake round the rigid form--a spectacle which not one of those who gazed upon it, spell-bound, fascinated by the horror of the sight, could ever hope to forget. ‘Murdered, and in my house!’ shrieked Mrs. Evitt, unconsciously echoing the words of Lady Macbeth, on a similar occasion. ‘I shall never let my first floor again. I’m a ruined woman. Seize him, ’old ’im tight,’ she cried, with sudden intensity. ‘It must ’ave been her ’usband done it. You was often a-quarrelling, you know you was.’ This fierce attack startled Jack Chicot. He turned upon the woman with his ghastly face, a new horror in his eyes. ‘I kill her!’ he cried. ‘I never raised my hand against her in my life, though she has tempted me many a time. I came into the house three minutes ago. I should not have known anything, for when I come in late I sleep in the little room, but I saw that----’ (he pointed to the thin red streak which had crept across the threshold, and under the door, to the carpetless landing outside), ‘and then I came in and found her lying here, as you see her.’ ‘Somebody ought to go for a policeman,’ suggested Desrolles. ‘I will,’ said Chicot. He was the only person present in a condition to leave the house and before any one could question his right to leave it he was gone. They waited outside that awful chamber for a quarter of an hour, but no policeman came, nor did Jack Chicot return. ‘I begin to think he has made a bolt of it,’ said Desrolles. ‘That looks rather bad.’ ‘Didn’t I tell you he’d done it?’ screamed the landlady. ‘I know he’d got to hate her. I’ve seen it in his looks--and she has told me as much, and cried over it, poor thing, when she’d taken a glass or two more than was good for her. And you let him go, like a coward as you was.’ ‘My good Mrs. Evitt, you are getting abusive. I was not sent into the world to arrest possible criminals. I am not a detective.’ ‘But I’m a ruined woman!’ cried the outraged householder. ‘Who’s to occupy my lodgings in future, I should like to know? The house’ll get the name of being haunted. Here’s Mrs. Rawber even, that has been with me close upon five year, will be wanting to go.’ ‘I’ve had a turn,’ assented the tragic lady, ‘and I don’t feel that I can lie down in my bed again downstairs. I’m afraid I may have to look for other apartments.’ ‘There,’ whimpered Mrs. Evitt, ‘didn’t I tell you I was a ruined woman?’ Desrolles had gone into the front room, and was standing at an open window watching for a policeman.