I climbed the stairs, and reached the door of the rooms. As I fumbled for my key, I suddenly discovered that the door was open a couple of inches; I put my hands against it, and went quietly in. The place was in darkness; but I remember that I had that curious feeling that one has, even in the darkness, that there was some one there near me. I called out the man's name again, as I had done before-- "Mr. Olivant! Mr. Olivant!" Only the echoes floated back to me; I could not understand what the silence meant. At last with trembling fingers I got out a match-box, and struck a light, and looked about me. I saw that the table had been set out with a decanter and a glass; there was a half-smoked cigar lying there, and it had burnt a hole in the faded table-cloth. A candlestick had been overturned, and the candle had rolled away a few inches from it. I set them upright, and put the match to the candle. In doing that I came to the edge of the table, and mechanically looked over; I started back with a cry. Murray Olivant was there in his own rooms, after all. But he lay stiff and stark, with his face upturned to the ceiling, and his dead eyes staring up at me. He was stone dead; his hand still gripped the knife that had been plunged straight into his breast, as though in his death agony he would have torn it out. I was too late; some one had been there before me. CHAPTER XI I TELL THE TRUTH My first thought, after that ghastly discovery, was to run to the outer door and close it. After that, the mere coming back into the room was an effort; I was afraid of that grim thing lying there, stark and still, with the knife sticking in its breast--afraid most of all of what it suggested. For I saw now that a hatred greater and deeper than mine had pursued this man, and had struck him down before my slower vengeance could reach him. As I stood in the room, in that silence greater than any silence I had known before, I realized that all that I had feared, and all that I had fought against had happened, after all: the boy had been here before me, and had struck down his enemy. There was no doubt about that at all: all the precautions Murray Olivant had taken had availed him nothing. Surely and resolutely young Arnold Millard had tracked him down, and had killed him, as he had sworn to do.