While the shepherd and the boy walked toward the inn, the old doctor and Liska had hurried onward to the rectory.  They were met at the door by the aged housekeeper, who staggered down the path wringing her hands, unable to give voice to anything but inarticulate expressions of grief and terror.  The rest of the household and the farm hands were gathered in a frightened group in the great courtyard of the stately rectory which had once been a convent building.  The physician hurried up the stairs into the pastor’s apartments.  These were high sunny and airy rooms with arched ceilings, deep window seats, great heavy doors and handsomely ornamented stoves.  The simple modern furniture appeared still more plain and common-place by contrast with the huge spaces of the building.

In one of the rooms a gendarme was standing beside the window.  The man saluted the physician, then shrugged his shoulders with an expression of hopelessness.  The doctor returned a silent greeting and passed through into the next apartment.  The old man was paler than usual and his face bore an expression of pain and surprise, the same expression that showed in the faces of those gathered downstairs.  The room he now entered was large like the others, the walls handsomely decorated, and every corner of it was flooded with sunshine.  There were two men in this room, the village magistrate and the notary.  Their expression, as they held out their hands to the doctor, showed that his coming brought great relief.  And there was something else in the room, something that drew the eyes of all three of the men immediately after their silent greeting.

This was a great pool of blood which lay as a hideous stain on the otherwise clean yellow-painted floor.  The blood must have flowed from a dreadful wound, from a severed artery even, the doctor thought, there was such a quantity of it.  It had already dried and darkened, making its terrifying ugliness the more apparent.

“This is the third murder in two years,” said the magistrate in a low voice.

“And the most mysterious of all of them,” added the clerk.

“Yes, it is,” said the doctor.  “And there is not a trace of the body, you say?—­or a clue as to where they might have taken the dead—­or dying man?”

With these words he looked carefully around the room, but there was no more blood to be seen anywhere.  Any spot would have been clearly visible on the light-coloured floor.  There was nothing else to tell of the horrible crime that had been committed here, nothing but the great, hideous, brown-red spot in the middle of the room.

“Have you made a thorough search for the body?” asked the doctor.

The magistrate shook his head.  “No, I have done nothing to speak of yet.  We have been waiting for you.  There is a gendarme at the gate; no one can go in or out without being seen.”

“Very well, then, let us begin our search now.”