bob lewthwaite, the child who had watched sir anthony gyde entering and leaving skirle cottage, was of a venturesome disposition. he feared few things except “boggles.” he feared klein a bit, but not nearly so much as the other children of the village. the fact of sir anthony’s visit to the cottage stirred his rustic imagination, and a great inspiration came to him to do as young britten had done, peep through the window.
he came down the fell side towards the cottage, half undecided in his mind; at the fell foot he was half inclined to give up the business, then, suddenly, he cast fear away, and crawling along by the cottage wall reached the window, raised himself on tip-toe, and peeped.
what he saw he did not quite understand at first. then it became horribly clearer.
there was a great grey bundle on the white cottage-floor; then the thing, on closer inspection, became a human body. but there was no head. there was a pool of something dark near where the head ought to have been.
it was klein’s body; he recognized it, because of the clothes, a grey homespun suit, that all the neighbourhood knew. it was klein, but he had no head.
murder never occurred to the child; he only recognized the fact that the man he had seen walking about the day before had suddenly lost his head, and the horror of this fact, suddenly borne in on him, was greater than he could well bear.
he ran he knew not whither, but presently he found himself sitting under a wall shivering and shaking and very sick.
then he went home, but he did not tell what he had seen.
he sat in a corner of his father’s cottage looking “waugh.” he would take no tea, and he went to bed mum. but no sooner was he undressed and between the sheets than suddenly, as if touched off, he began to bellow.
then it all came out helter-skelter, and the horrified cottagers listened to him as he told his gruesome tale.
there is scarcely a farm girl in cumberland who has not a bicycle of her own, and before the tale was well told bob lewthwaite’s eldest sister had started to fetch the constable from langwathby.
when he arrived, and when lamps were lit, the whole village, headed by the policeman, made for skirle cottage.
the constable alone entered.
on the floor lay the body of klein, headless and fearful to behold. it was dressed in the well-known grey suit, but the clothes, for some mysterious reason, were slashed, as if with a knife. the coat was open and the waistcoat, but there were no wounds on the trunk that the constable could see.
no knife or weapon of any sort was to be seen.
the room was furnished plainly, with a deal table, kitchen chairs and an old horsehair sofa. neither chairs or table were overset; there was no mark at all of a struggle, nothing to hint of a tragedy enacted there, nothing, that is to say, but the headless body lying upon the floor.
the constable, a man of great intelligence, closed the door on the murmuring throng outside, and made a minute examination of the room.
he searched the floor carefully; there were no marks of footsteps, but in a corner lay something white; he picked it up, it was a silk handkerchief, marked with the initials “a.g.”
on the mantel, beside a tin candlestick, lay a letter, an envelope containing the envelope and letter which sir anthony had received that morning, and a sheet of paper on which was written:
“paris, feb. 8th.
”you will not escape me; neither you or the secret you carry, which is also mine. if necessary, i will follow you to the ends of the earth—and beyond,
“klein.”
