'How very odd!' exclaimed Mr. Griggs aloud; and he turned his hand
this way and that under the electric lamp, looking for some small
wound which he supposed must have bled. There was a little more inside
his fingers, and between them, as if it had oozed through and then had
spread over his knuckles.

But he could find nothing to account for it. He was an elderly man who
had lived all over the world and had seen most things, and he was not
easily surprised, but he was puzzled now. Not the least strange thing
was that the stain should be as small as it was and yet so dark. He
crossed the room again and examined the front of his overcoat with the
most minute attention. It was made of a dark frieze, almost black,
on which a red stain would have shown very little; but after a very
careful search Griggs was convinced that the blood which had stained
his hand had not touched the cloth.

He went into his dressing-room and looked at his face in his
shaving-glass, but there was certainly no stain on the weather-beaten
cheeks or the furrowed forehead.

'How very odd!' he exclaimed a second time.

He washed his hands slowly and carefully, examining them again and
again, for he thought it barely possible that the skin might have been
cracked somewhere by the cutting March wind, and might have bled a
little, but he could not find the least sign of such a thing.

When he was finally convinced that he could not account for the stain
he had now washed off, he filled his old pipe thoughtfully and sat
down in a big shabby arm-chair beside the table to think over other