outlined a fresh track of blood. The red steps pointed towards us, and led away from an inner room, the door of which was closed. Gregson flung it open and held his light full blaze in front of him, whilst we all peered eagerly over his shoulders.
In the middle of the floor of the empty room was huddled the figure of an enormous man, his clean-shaven, swarthy face grotesquely horrible in its contortion, and his head encircled by a ghastly crimson halo of blood, lying in a broad wet circle upon the white woodwork. His knees were drawn up, his hands thrown out in agony, and from the centre of his broad, brown, upturned throat there projected the white haft of a knife driven blade-deep into his body. Giant as he was, the man must have gone down like a poleaxed ox before that terrific blow. Beside his right hand a most formidable horn-handled, two-edged dagger lay upon the floor, and near it a black kid glove.
“By George! it’s Black Gorgiano himself!” cried the American detective. “Someone has got ahead of us this time.”
“Here is the candle in the window, Mr. Holmes,” said Gregson. “Why, whatever are you doing?”
Holmes had stepped across, had lit the candle, and was passing it backwards and forwards across the window-panes. Then he peered into the
