The up-flung trunk was darkly stained and
sticky....
With a shudder she dropped the bronze, and looked down. Victor lay at her
feet, supine, grotesquely asprawl. His face was bruised and livid; the
cheek laid open by the bronze was smeared with scarlet, accentuating the
leaden colour of his skin. His mouth was ajar; his eyes, half closed,
hideously revealed slender slits of white. More blood discoloured his right
temple, welling from under the matted, coarse black hair.
He was terribly motionless. If he breathed, Sofia could detect no sign of
it.
In panic she knelt beside the body, threw back Victor's dinner-coat, and
laid an ear above his heart.
At first, in her mad anxiety, she could hear nothing. But presently a
beating registered, slow and harsh but steady-paced.
With a sob of relief she sat back on her heels, and after a little while
got unsteadily to her feet.
The house door closed with a dull bang, and from the entrance hallway came
a sound of voices. She stood petrified in dread till the voices fell and
she heard stairs creak under an ascending tread.
Thus reminded that Lanyard's return might occur at any moment, she made all
haste to patch up the disarray of veil and coiffure. Fortunately her
costume, protected by the cloak of heavy and sturdy stuff, was quite
undamaged.
Not till on the point of leaving did she remember the painting. It lay
unharmed where it had fallen when Victor seized her veil. She was calm
enough now to consider herself fortunate in finding it so poorly secured in
its frame; without the latter it would be far easier to smuggle the canvas
away under her cloak.
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