"At first he only saw that the chair, set before the broad table covered with papers, was without an occupant. But gradually, and not quite at once—or so it seemed to him looking back—he became aware that in the shadow of the table, stretched angularly across the floor, lay Sir George Downing, dead. Standing there, with the horror of what he saw growing on him, Wantley had not a moment of real doubt, of wild hope that this might not be death. Still, as he knelt down and brought himself to touch, to move, that which lay there, he suddenly became aware of a fact which would have laid any such doubt, for above Downing's right ear was a wound"