th significantly, as we s

te side of the corridor, was suddenly thrown open, and a man whose face showed ghastly white in the light of the solitary lamp beyond, literall

ng pitifully at him for support. "Come and see him, sir-for Heaven's sake come in! I think he's dying; and

still clutching at Nayland Smith, he turned his ghas

Sir Gregory

aunt, tanned face seemed to me t

he snapped. "There'

tical with our own. The sitting-room was empty and in the utmost disorder, but from the direction of the principal bedroom came a most horrible mumbling and gurgling sou

folds, showing if such evidence were necessary, how terribly he was fallen away from his constitutional habit. He wore a beard of at least ten days' growth, which served to accentua

the wasted face; and then star

e?" he muttered. "What does

side to side hideously; then by degrees they seemed to become less glazed, and a light of returning sanity entered them. They became fixed; and they were fixed upon Nayland

g the glance of the man Beeton, who

taking his gaze from Smith, gulped a little of the water and then thrust my hand away. As I turned to place the t

power of speech!"

bling voice. "He dropped off to sleep out there on the floor, and I broug

bling and now, gulping noisily, began to m

im up!" He thrust his notebook, open at a blank page, before the man who

I supported him. Across the bent shoulders Smith silently q

uds steaming in at the open door. Save for the gulping of the dying man, and the sobbing breaths of Beeton, there was no sound. Six irregular lines Sir Gregory Hale scrawled upon the page; then suddenly his body became a d

etan frontier ... Key o

... rising. Watch Ti

or below I could not be sure, came a faint, d