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Page 52
He paused.
"In the cut of an abandoned road we found the body of Ordez
riddled with buckshot, and his pockets rifled. But sewed up in
his coat was the silk envelope with these papers. I took
possession of them as a Justice of the Peace, ordered the body
sent on here, and the people to assemble."
He extended his arm toward the faint, quivering, distant sound.
"Listen, Zindorf," he cried; "the bell began to toll for Duncan,
but it tolls now for the murderer of Ordez. It tolls to raise
the country against the assassin!"
The false monk had the courage of his master. He stood out and
faced my father.
"But can you find him, Pendleton," he said. And his harsh voice
was firm. "You find Ordez dead; well, some assassin shot him and
carried his body into the cut of the abandoned road. But who was
that assassin? Is Virginia scant of murderers? Do you know the
right one?"
My father answered in his great dominating voice
"God knows him, Zindorf, and I know him! . . . The man who
murdered Ordez made a fatal blunder . . . He used a sign of God
in the service of the devil and he is ruined!"
The big man stepped slowly backward into the room, while my
father's voice, filling the big empty spaces of the house,
followed after him.
"You are lost, Zindorf! Satan is insulted, and God is outraged!
You are lost!"
There was a moment's silence; from outside came the sound of men
and horses. The notes of the girl, light, happy, ascended from
the lower chamber, as she sang about her preparations for the
journey. Zindorf continued to step awfully backward. And
Lucian Morrow, shaken and sober, cried out in the extremity of
fear:
"In God's name, Pendleton, what do you mean; Zindorf, using a
sign of God in the service of the devil."
And my father answered him:
"The corpse of Ordez lay in the bare cut of the abandoned road,
and beside it, bedded in the damp clay where he had knelt down to
rifle the pockets of the murdered body, were the patch prints of
Zindorf's knees!"
VII. The Fortune Teller
Sir Henry Marquis continued to read; he made no comment; his
voice clear and even.
It was a big sunny room. The long windows looked out on a formal
garden, great beech trees and the bow of the river. Within it
was a sort of library. There were bookcases built into the wall,
to the height of a man's head, and at intervals between them,
rising from the floor to the cornice of the shelves, were rows of
mahogany drawers with glass knobs. There was also a flat writing
table.
It was the room of a traveler, a man of letters, a dreamer. On
the table were an inkpot of carved jade, a paperknife of ivory
with gold butterflies set in; three bronze storks, with their
backs together, held an exquisite Japanese crystal.
The room was in disorder - the drawers pulled out and the
contents ransacked.
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