Bisbee daily review., 1913-11-23


 But the muscular effort Of climbing two fiights had sent his liquor surging ,o his head. 60 that he dizzied and staggered. He caught the banister for support. Then something. real or lanciod caught his eye-something which held his drunken attention He stopped and elutched at it The effort oveTbalanced him and sent him sprawling on his hands into some wet sticky substance.
 Fearful careless housekeeping" he said as he regained his feet. forces me 10 extreme measure wiping hands on shirt No other place to wipe hands. Renewed necessity arises he stop ped and repeated the phrase with in- ordinate delight-"renewed necessity for reaching own room" He caught the knob as he fell, and the barrier opened, letting him tumble on his own motion to the floor He kicked the door shut as he lay prostrate, and then managed to pull himself upright and reach the electrie-light button for Mrs. Moore burned gas in the halls for economy, but electric lights in the rooms. The two tumbles had thrown him into another state of conscious ness; bis head began to clear and his motions to steady. So he turned, his predicament still in his mind, to the wash-stand in the corner.
 Above it hung mirror. In passing. TOmmy's gaze swept the glass, leaped back, caught on what blanched his face to a sickly white, what steadied his unsteady figure until it stood straight and stiff, what cleared h:s head so violently that he could think with all the swiftness of terror. On his dress shirt-front was the i'm print of a huge red hand.
 "Whose?" Tommy asked himself one instant. The next, his gaze bounded from the mirror to his own hands.
 Blood mired his fingers On his coat was blood. on his sleeve was blood. on his knees was blood. on his very shoes. He looked at the mirror again. Across his chin zigzagged a dark red line-blood also.
 His first sane thought was that he
 
 death. He looked again at his hands, but saw no wound Then, drunken memories lingering e little in his so- Der mind, he remembered the fall and the process of wiping his hands. He ran back to the hallway, turned up the pin-point of light on the gas-jet. There 1t was, thin stream of blood, spotted a little where he had fallen in it. And it was widest where it began its fow-at the threshold of Captain Hanska's door. Tn a weak access of real terror, he fell to pound ing on the wall and shouting:
 Murder! Murder!"
 Suddenly mastering himself, he seized the knob of Captain Hanska's door. The latch gave way-it was not locked. But 1t opened no more than l foot or two-scarcely enough to give , man passage-when something blocked It from behind. In the tempo rary weakness of his will, Tommy North shrauk back from entering such a place of veritable horror. He shouted again; and now Professor Noll, looking in his bathrobe like a strange priest of a strange Eastern rite, rushed from his room gasping:
 Whats the natter"
 The blood. the pale, gibbering, dab bled young man, were explanation enough. He himself opened the door as far as it could go, and edged into the room.
 Matches, quick" he called from within. Tommy North found his match-Case; and the mastery of an- other mind. with the example of better courage, drew him after Professor Noll. He lighted @ match, held it up. It fIared and blazed until it burned his fingers. In that fiickering transi- -ory light they saw all that it was necessary to see.
 Captain Hanska's body blocked the door. He lay dressed in his paiamas, the shrunken relic of what had been a pOrtly man-lay on his back with his hands lifted over his head as though he were clutching at the air. From bis breast stuck the haft of a great knife; and from the wound the pool of blood flowed to the threshold. The match went out; and with common impulse Tommy North and Professor Eoll struggled to see who would be the first to get back through that door.
 There followed alarms, screams, the running of women, mysteries on the part of Mrs. Moore, who had started from bed at Tommy's first cry. Tom my North. albeit ordinarily a brave and resourceful young man enough. vas of no use in this crisis, what with the compression of ten emotional years into ten minutes of life. Worse for him, the hen-minded Mrs. Moore, seeing the blood, cried, You mur- derer." clutched at his coat, and fell into a faint. Upon Professor NoIl de- volved the masculine guidance Of this affair. And he thought first, not of the police. but of a doctor. By this time. Miss Harding and Miss Jones were weeping breast to breast; Mrs. Moore had rscovered to say that she always expected it of MT North. asl Miss Estrilla, the invalid lady on the top floor, had called from the head of the stairs, What is it?" With the brutality which impels us in crises to conhde unpalliated horrors, some one shrieked. "Hanska's murdered" There came from above some Spanish ejaculations to which no one paid much attention. and then a rattling of