Coombs was no plantation overseer, but a mere Texas bully.  The very appearance of the man told that, and those neglected, weed-grown fields were another proof.  What was he here for, then?  And Sallie!  Lord, I could despise that Texas rough, but the snaky eyes of the woman made me shiver, and look about apprehensively.  Then there was the dead man—­the dead man.  There echoed into my brain the woman’s whisper in the parlor below, “I ’m not afraid, but I am beginning to believe we ’re doing wrong.”  There was wrong somewhere surely—­cowardly crime, murder!  But were we connected with it?  Was it also part of the plot in which we were employed?  I could not understand, yet resolved one thing clearly—­I would find out tomorrow, early, before she had to be told the ghastly discovery of the night.  With the first return of daylight I would seek out Coombs, tell him what I had seen, and compel him to confess the truth.  Then I should know how to act, how to approach her, and explain.  My nerves steadied as I sat there in the silence, and my mind drifted to the woman sleeping across the hall.  Then, my cigar smoked out, I also fell asleep in the chair.

The gray of dawn was on the windows when I awoke, my body aching from its unnatural position.  For the instant I imagined some unusual sound had aroused me, yet all was quiet, the only noise the twittering of birds from without.  I closed my eyes again, but a ceaseless train of thought kept me wide awake, and, finally, I got upon my feet and looked out into the dawn, determining to explore our strange surroundings before any others were astir.  With loaded revolver in my pocket, I slipped into the hall.  The faint light revealed its shabbiness, the grimy rag carpet, and discolored walls.  Some spirit of adventure led me the full length until my hand was upon the latch of that last door.  I could not resist an impulse to look upon the dead man again by daylight, and thus assure myself of the reality of what seemed only a dream.  I opened the door slowly, noiselessly, and peered cautiously within.  The light was strong there, revealing clearly every nook and corner of the room.  All was exactly as I recalled it to memory—­the stained walls, the dirty floor, the table littered with cards, the overturned chair and the motionless body of the dead man.  I ventured half way to the window, staring about at every sign revealed in the glare.  From the wound in the head a dark flow of blood stained the floor, and, as I bent closer, noticed the eyelids were lowered over the dead eyes.  Shot as he had been, killed instantly, the hand of the assassin must have performed this act.  Then surely this killing had been no common quarrel, but a planned assassination, the culmination of some prearranged plot.