Tony Walker

No sign of life.

He passed into the hall.

There was no light anywhere.

Where was everybody, and why was the front door open?

There was no one in the drawing-room, the dining-room, and the study, nine feet by seven, were equally blank.

Everyone was out, evidently.

But the unpleasant sense that he was, perhaps, not the first casual visitor to walk through that open door impelled him to look through the house before he went away and closed it after him.

So he went upstairs.

And at the door of the first bedroom he came to, he struck a wax match, as he had done in the sitting room.

Even as he did so, he felt that he was not alone, and he was prepared to see something, but for what he saw, he was not prepared.

for what he saw lay on the bed in a white loose gown, and it was his sweetheart, and its throat was cut from ear to ear.

he doesn't know what happened then nor how he got downstairs and into the street but he got out somehow and the policeman found him in a fit under the lamp-post at the corner of the street he couldn't speak when they picked him up and he passed the night in the police cells because the policeman had seen plenty of drunken men before but never one in a fit

The next morning he was better, though still very white and shaky, but the tale he told the magistrate was convincing, and they sent a couple of constables with him to her house.

There was no crowd about it, as he had fancied there would be, and the blinds were not down.

as he stood dazed in front of the door it opened and she came out he held on to the door-post for support she's all right you see said the constable who had found him under the lamp i told you he was drunk but you would know best

When he was alone with her he told her not all, for that would not bear telling, but how he had come into the commodious semi-detached, and how he had found a door open and the lights out, and that he had been into that long back room facing the stairs and had seen something.

In even trying to hint at which he turned sick and broke down and had to have a brandy given him.

but my dearest she said i dare say the house was dark for we were all at the crystal palace with my uncle and no doubt the door was open for the maids will run out if they are left but you could not have been in that room because i locked it when i came away and the key was in my pocket i dressed in a hurry and i left all my odds and ends lying about

I know, he said.

I saw a green scarf on a chair and some long brown gloves and little hairpins and ribbons and a prayer book and a lace handkerchief on the dressing table.