Never before, or since, have I experienced such relief, as when my
fingers closed over this precious find. I struck one, and as the
phosphorus head burst into flame, stared about the vacant room, and
then down into the dead face within the bunk. The man had been killed
by the stroke of a hatchet, and was almost unrecognizable. Not until
the blazing match had burned to my finger tips was I sure of his
identity--then, to my added horror, I recognized Coombs. I struck a
second match, assuring myself beyond doubt, and drew the blanket up
over the disfigured face. As the brief light flickered and died, I
grasped the full significance of the man's death, the probable reason
for his being stricken down. Whoever had been hidden behind that
picture, crouching in the passage, had overheard his confession to me.
This was vengeance wreaked upon a traitor, the executed death sentence
of desperate men. And it had just been carried out--within the hour!
The murderers might be even now lurking within the shadows watching my
every motion.

Again a slender match flared into tiny flame, casting about a dim
radius of light, partially reassuring me that I was alone. Before it
flickered out into darkness my eyes made two discoveries--the opening
of a dark passage to the left of the bunks, and a ghastly hand
protruding from the upper berth. I was scarcely sure this last was not
a vision of my half-mad brain, but a fourth match revealed it
all--above the murdered Coombs, hidden beneath blankets, was the body
of the strange man shot in the upper room. My God! the place was a
charnel house! a spot accursed! I crept back from that ghastly scene
of death as though invisible hands gripped my throat. I fairly choked
with the unutterable horror which overcame me. And yet I knew I must
act, must go on to the end. Even as I crouched there, trembling and