A candle flared and guttered upon the mantel, and by this flickering
light he saw an overturned chair, and, beyond that, a litter of
scattered papers and documents and, beyond that again, Jasper Gaunt
seated at his desk in the corner. He was lolling back in his chair
like one asleep, and yet--was this sleep?
Something in his attitude, something in the appalling stillness of
that lolling figure, something in the utter quiet of the whole place,
filled Barnabas with a nameless, growing horror. He took a step
nearer, another, and another--then stopped and, uttering a choking
gasp, fell back to the wall and leaned there suddenly faint and sick.
For, indeed, this was more than sleep. Jasper Gaunt lolled there, a
horrid, bedabbled thing, with his head at a hideous angle and the
dagger, which had been wont to glitter so evilly from the wall,
smitten sideways through his throat.
Barnabas crouched against the wall, his gaze riveted by the dull
gleam of the steel; and upon the silence, now, there crept another
sound soft and regular, a small, dull, plashing sound; and, knowing
what it was, he closed his eyes and the faintness grew upon him. At
length he sighed and, shuddering, lifted his head and moved a
backward step toward the door; thus it was he chanced to see Jasper
Gaunt's right hand--that white, carefully-tended right hand, whose
long, smooth fingers had clenched themselves even tighter in death
than they had done in life. And, in their rigid grasp was something
that struck Barnabas motionless; that brought him back slowly,
slowly across that awful room to sink upon one knee above that pale,
clenched hand, while, sweating, shuddering with loathing, he forced
open those stiffening fingers and drew from their dead clutch
something that he stared at with dilating eyes, and with white lips
suddenly compressed, ere he hid it away in his pocket.
Then, shivering, he arose and backed away, feeling behind him for
the door, and so passed out into the passage and down the stairs,
but always with his pale face turned toward the dim-lit room where
Jasper Gaunt lolled in his chair, a bedabbled, wide-eyed thing of
horror, staring up at the dingy ceiling.
Thus, moving ever backwards, Barnabas came to the front door, felt
for the catch, but, with his hand upon it, paused once more to listen;
yet heard only the thick beating of his own heart, and the loud,
deliberate ticking of the wizen-faced clock upon the stairs. And now,
as he hearkened, it seemed to him that it spoke no more but had
taken on a new and more awful sound; for now its slow, rhythmic beat
was hatefully like another sound, a soft sound and regular, a small,
dull, plashing sound,--the awful tap! tap! tap! of great,
slow-falling drops of blood.