Finding nothing there but vacancy to expend itself
upon, it swung about for a moment on what looked like a wire or a
whip-cord, then slowly came to rest within a foot or so from the
floor.
A cry from the horrified officials below was what first brought me
to myself. Withdrawing from my narrow quarters I hastened down to
them and added one more white face to the three I found congregated
in the doorway. In the diabolical ingenuity we had seen displayed,
crime had reached its acme and the cup of human depravity seemed
full. When we had regained in some measure our self-possession, we
all advanced for a closer look at the murderous object dangling
before us. We found it to be a heavy leaden weight painted on its
lower end to match the bosses of stucco-work which appeared at
regular intervals in the ornamentation of the ceiling. When drawn
up into place, that is, when occupying the hole from which it now
hung suspended, the portion left to protrude would evidently bear
so small a proportion to its real bulk as to justify any eye in
believing it to be the mate, and the harmless mate, of all the
others.
"It hangs just where the settle stood," observed Durbin,
significantly.
"And just at the point where the cushions invite rest, as the
colonel so suggestively puts it in his strange puzzle of a
confession," added the district attorney.
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