“I’ll be down later,” I told the others, and set out after the maid.
She was running back to the Hendrixson house. I couldn’t run, couldn’t even walk fast. She and Hendrixson and more of his servants were standing on the front porch when I arrived.
“They killed Oliver and Brophy,” the old man said.
“How?”
“We were in the back of the house, the rear second story, watching the flashes of the shooting down in the village. Oliver was down here, just inside the front door, and Brophy in the room with the presents. We heard a shot in there, and immediately a man appeared in the doorway of our room, threatening us with two pistols, making us stay there for perhaps ten minutes. Then he shut and locked the door and went away. We broke the door down—and found Brophy and Oliver dead.”
“Let’s look at them.”
The chauffeur was just inside the front door. He lay on his back, with his brown throat cut straight across the front, almost back to the vertebrae. His rifle was under him. I pulled it out and examined it. It had not been fired.
Upstairs, the butler Brophy was huddled against a leg of one of the tables on which the presents had been spread. His gun was gone. I turned him over, straightened him out, and found a bullet-hole in his chest. Around the hole his coat was charred in a large area.
Most of the presents were still here. But the most valuable pieces were gone. The others were in disorder, lying around any which way, their