aps he's asleep," thought Clo. She turned the handle, and to her
surprise the door yielded. She had expected to find it locked. As
before, the room was unlit save by golden reflections from the street
below. The girl opened the door wide, and deliberately looked in.
Strange; there sat the man in his easy chair in front of the window,
with his mean profile outlined against the light, just as he had sat
when Beverley had answered the summons to "Come in!" One would say, to
look at him, that he had not moved an inch.

Clo's theory had gone wrong. She had urged her conviction upon Angel
that he was the thief; that, if he were the thief, he would "make his
get-away" in haste. Yet here he sat, in the dark, asleep.

She stepped across the threshold, felt along the wall for an electric
switch, found it, and flooded the room with light. Still the figure in
the chair did not stir.

Clo glanced round the squalid room. Peterson had begun to pack. A
suitcase lay open on the narrow bed. The wrinkled gray-white counterpane
was half covered with scattered clothing.

"If he's fast enough asleep, I can go through everything," she thought,
"including his pockets!"

The girl walked in, and closed the door resolutely but softly, her eyes
always upon the figure in the chair. She mustn't begin to search the
place without making sure that Peterson was not playing "possum." It
would be awful, when her back was turned, to have him pounce upon her
like a monkey. She tip-toed across the room, and stopped in front of the
easy-chair, within a yard of the stretched-out feet, where she could
take a good look at the sleeper. His head was bent down over his breast,
and the girl had to stoop a little to peer into the face. But a glance
sent her reeling back against a chest of drawers. The top of the man's
head had been crushed in by some blunt instrument. His forehead and the
side of his face turned toward the window were covered with blood. His
shirt and coat were soaked with it, in a long red stripe, and a dark
pool had formed in a vague heart-shape on the patterned carpet.

Clo had never before seen a dead man, yet she did not doubt that this
man was dead. He could have been dead for a short time only. The blood
on the livid face glistened wet in the electric light. It had hardly
ceased to drip from the wound in his head.

For a time Clo stood still, as if frozen. But slowly the power to think
came back. To her own horror and disgust she found