The tiny, misshapen countenance writhed with convulsive fury, and from the mouth poured out a foaming spume.  It raised its voice higher and higher, shrieking senseless gibberish in its rage.  Then it began to hurl its whole body madly against the glass walls and to beat its head.  It appeared to have a sudden incomprehensible hatred for the three strangers.  It was trying to fly at them.  The toothless gums moved spasmodically, and it threw its face into horrible grimaces.  That nameless, loathsome abortion was the nearest that Oliver Haddo had come to the human form.

‘Come away,’ said Arthur.  ‘We must not look at this.’

He quickly flung the covering over the jar.

‘Yes, for God’s sake let us go,’ said Susie.

‘We haven’t done yet,’ answered Arthur.  ’We haven’t found the author of all this.’

He looked at the room in which they were, but there was no door except that by which they had entered.  Then he uttered a startled cry, and stepping forward fell on his knee.

On the other side of the long tables heaped up with instruments, hidden so that at first they had not seen him, Oliver Haddo lay on the floor, dead.  His blue eyes were staring wide, and they seemed larger than they had ever been.  They kept still the expression of terror which they had worn in the moment of his agony, and his heavy face was distorted with deadly fear.  It was purple and dark, and the eyes were injected with blood.

‘He died of suffocation,’ whispered Dr Porhoet.

Arthur pointed to the neck.  There could be seen on it distinctly the marks of the avenging fingers that had strangled the life out of him.  It was impossible to hesitate.

‘I told you that I had killed him,’ said Arthur.

Then he remembered something more.  He took hold of the right arm.  He was convinced that it had been broken during that desperate struggle in the darkness.  He felt it carefully and listened.  He heard plainly the two parts of the bone rub against one another.  The dead man’s arm was broken just in the place where he had broken it.  Arthur stood up.  He took one last look at his enemy.  That vast mass of flesh lay heaped up on the floor in horrible disorder.

‘Now that you have seen, will you come away?’ said Susie, interrupting him.

The words seemed to bring him suddenly to himself.

‘Yes, we must go quickly.’

They turned away and with hurried steps walked through those bright attics till they came to the stairs.

‘Now go down and wait for me at the door,’ said Arthur.  ’I will follow you immediately.’

‘What are you going to do?’ asked Susie.

‘Never mind.  Do as I tell you.  I have not finished here yet.’

They went down the great oak staircase and waited in the hall.  They wondered what Arthur was about.  Presently he came running down.

‘Be quick!’ he cried.  ‘We have no time to lose.’