The Red Hand | Page 2

more unpleasant or more commonplace.
"More mysterious, you mean," said Dyson. "I warn you, Phillipps, we
are now hot upon the scent."
They dived yet deeper into the maze of brickwork; some time before
they had crossed a noisy thoroughfare running east and west, and now
the quarter seemed all amorphous, without character; here a decent
house with sufficient garden, here a faded square, and here factories
surrounded by high, blank walls, with blind passages and dark corners;
but all ill-lighted and unfrequented and heavy with silence.
Presently, as they paced down a forlorn street of two-story houses,

Dyson caught sight of a dark and obscure turning.
"I like the look of that," he said; "it seems to me promising." There was
a street lamp at the entrance, and another, a mere glimmer, at the
further end. Beneath the lamp, on the pavement, an artist had evidently
established his academy in the daytime, for the stones were all a blur of
crude colours rubbed into each other, and a few broken fragments of
chalk lay in a little heap beneath the wall.
"You see people do occasionally pass this way," said Dyson, pointing
to the ruins of the screever's work. "I confess I should not have thought
it possible. Come, let us explore."
On one side of this byway of communication was a great timber-yard,
with vague piles of wood looming shapeless above the enclosing wall;
and on the other side of the road a wall still higher seemed to enclose a
garden, for there were shadows like trees, and a faint murmur of
rustling leaves broke the silence. It was a moonless night, and clouds
that had gathered after sunset had blackened, and midway between the
feeble lamps the passage lay all dark and formless, and when one
stopped and listened, and the sharp echo of reverberant footsteps ceased,
there came from far away, as from beyond the hills, a faint roll of the
noise of London. Phillipps was bolstering up his courage to declare that
he had had enough of the excursion, when a loud cry from Dyson broke
in upon his thoughts.
"Stop, stop, for Heaven's sake, or you will tread on it! There! almost
under your feet!"
Phillipps looked down, and saw a vague shape, dark, and framed in
surrounding darkness, dropped strangely on the pavement, and then a
white cuff glimmered for a moment as Dyson lit a match, which went
out directly.
"It's a drunken man," said Phillipps very coolly.
"It's a murdered man," said Dyson, and he began to call for police with
all his might, and soon from the distance running footsteps echoed and

grew louder, and cries sounded.
A policeman was the first to come up.
"What's the matter?" he said, as he drew to a stand, panting. "Anything
amiss here?" for he had not seen what was on the pavement.
"Look!" said Dyson, speaking out of the gloom. "Look there! My
friend and I came down this place three minutes ago, and that is what
we found."
The man flashed his light on the dark shape and cried out.
"Why, it's murder," he said; "there's blood all about him, and a puddle
of it in the gutter there. He's not dead long, either. Ah! there's the
wound! It's in the neck."
Dyson bent over what was lying there. He saw a prosperous gentleman,
dressed in smooth, well-cut clothes. The neat whiskers were beginning
to grizzle a little; he might have been forty-five an hour before; and a
handsome gold watch had half slipped out of his waistcoat pocket. And
there in the flesh of the neck, between chin and ear, gaped a great
wound, clean cut, but all clotted with drying blood, and the white of the
cheeks shone like a lighted lamp above the red.
Dyson turned, and looked curiously about him; the dead man lay across
the path with his head inclined towards the wall, and the blood from the
wound streamed away across the pavement, and lay a dark puddle, as
the policeman had said, in the gutter. Two more policemen had come
up, the crowd gathered, coming from all quarters, and the officers had
as much as they could do to keep the curious at a distance. The three
lanterns were flashing here and there, searching for more evidence, and
in the gleam of one of them Dyson caught sight of an object in the road,
to which he called the attention of the policeman nearest to him.
"Look, Phillipps," he said, when the man had secured it and held it up.
"Look, that should be something in your way!"

It was a dark flinty stone, gleaming like obsidian, and shaped to a broad
edge something after the manner of an adze. One end was rough, and
easily grasped