The inner door stood ajar, and
peered into that leaguer[5] of shadows with a long slit of daylight
like a pointing finger.
From these fear-stricken rovings, Markheim's eyes returned to the body
of his victim, where it lay both humped and sprawling, incredibly
small and strangely meaner than in life. In these poor, miserly
clothes, in that ungainly attitude, the dealer lay like so much
sawdust. Markheim had feared to see it, and, lo! it was nothing. And
yet, as he gazed, this bundle of old clothes and pool of blood began
to find eloquent voices. There it must lie; there was none to work the
cunning hinges or direct the miracle of locomotion--there it must lie
till it was found. Found! aye, and then? Then would this dead flesh
lift up a cry that would ring over England, and fill the world with
the echoes of pursuit. Ay, dead or not, this was still the enemy.
"Time was that when the brains were out[6]," he thought; and the
first word struck into his mind. Time, now that the deed was
accomplished--time, which had dosed for the victim, had become
instant and momentous for the slayer.
The thought was yet in his mind, when, first one and then another,
with every variety of pace and voice--one deep as the bell from a
cathedral turret, another ringing on its treble notes the prelude of a
waltz--the clocks began to strike the hour of three in the afternoon.
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