Focussing his attention on the bedstead, Colonel Crockett did discover, on the underside of a bedraggled feather pillow, a discoloration of reddish-brown hue that appeared to be dried blood. This mark, however, was of no greater size than might have resulted from a common nosebleed. In general, moreover, the bedclothes and mattress were so foully besmirched with every variety of matter—from the vestiges of numberless foodstuffs to the evidence of human incontinence—that the precise nature of any individual stain was nearly impossible to determine.

His visage contorted into an expression of extreme distaste, the frontiersman let the fetid pillow drop back upon the mattress, then exhaled a deep sigh of exasperation. “Damned if this ain’t the queerest business I ever struck!” he declared, “Who exactly was this Montague feller, anyways?”

Captain Russell, who was in the process of picking through the scant belongings in the topmost drawer of the rickety bureau, cast a glance over his right shoulder and replied: “As of yet, we have been able to ascertain very little information about the man. His life—at least during the time that he has occupied these quarters—has been, as the result of his manifold infirmities, reclusive in the extreme. Is that not the case, Officer Carlton?”

“Aye, sir,” replied the latter, who was kneeling by the fireplace and employing a poker to sift through the hearth, as though the heap of dead ashes might hold a clue to the vanished man’s fate. “That’s the impression I’ve gathered.”

While my companions had busied themselves in the above-mentioned ways, I had bent my efforts to a meticulous scrutiny of the many dusty tomes scattered about the room. Now, as I stood in one corner of the chamber with a heavy volume open in my hands, I looked up from its pages and announced: “Of one fact, gentlemen, we may at least be certain. Mr. Alexander Montague may be fairly described as a man of both formidable learning and keen discernment in matters pertaining to literature.”

“And how do you reckon that?” inquired Crockett.

“My conclusion is based on a scrupulous examination of the books which appear to constitute the bulk of Montague’s personal belongings and which consist, in large part, of expensive, if rather poorly maintained, editions of the great English dramatists, including Marlowe, Dryden, and, of course, the immortal Shakespeare, Here in my hands, for example, I have a rare eighteenth-century collection of Jacobean melodramas, including John Ford’s The Broken Heart and The White Devil, or Vittoria Corombona of Webster.