“Devotedly yours,
Charley Wright.”

For a long time Robert Dunn stood, looking down in silence at that dead face which was hardly more still, more rigid than his own.

He shivered, for he felt very cold.  It was as though the coldness of the death in whose presence he stood had laid its chilly hand on him also.

At last he stirred and looked about him with a bewildered air, then carefully and with a reverent hand, he put back the sackcloth covering.

“So I’ve found you, Charley,” he whispered.  “Found you at last.”

He replaced the lid, leaving everything as it had been when he entered the attic, and stood for a time, trying to collect his thoughts which the shock of this dreadful discovery had so disordered, and to decide what to do next.

“But, then, that’s simple,” he thought.  “I must go straight to the police and bring them here.  They said they wanted proof; they said I had nothing to go on but bare suspicion.  But that’s evidence enough to hang Deede Dawson—­the girl, too, perhaps.”

Then he wondered whether it could be that she knew nothing and was innocent of all part or share in this dreadful deed.  But how could that be possible?  How could it be that such a crime committed in the house in which she lived could remain unknown to her?

On the other hand, when he thought of her clear, candid eyes; when he remembered her gentle beauty, it did not seem conceivable that behind them could lie hidden the tigerish soul of a murderess.

“That’s only sentiment, though,” he muttered.  “Nothing more.  Beautiful women have been rotten bad through and through before today.  There’s nothing for me to do but to go and inform the police, and get them here as soon as possible.  If she’s innocent, I suppose she’ll be able to prove it.”

He hesitated a moment, as he thought of how he had left her, bound and a prisoner.

It seemed brutal to leave her like that while he was away, for he would probably be some time absent.  But with a hard look, he told himself that whatever pain she suffered she must endure it.

His first and sole thought must be to bring to justice the murderers of his unfortunate friend; and to secure, too, thereby, the success almost certainly of his own mission.

To release her and leave her at liberty might endanger the attainment of both those ends, and so she must remain a prisoner.

“Only,” he muttered, “if she knew the attic almost over her head held such a secret, why, didn’t she take the chance I gave her of getting hold of my revolver?  That she didn’t, looks as if she knew nothing.”

But then he thought again of the photograph in her room and remembered that agony of grief to which she had been surrendering herself when he first saw her.  Now those passionate tears of hers seemed to him like remorse.

“I’ll leave her where she is,” he decided again.  “I can’t help it; I mustn’t run any risks.  My first duty is to get the police here and have Deede Dawson arrested.”