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 unmanned, seeing visions in the darkness, hearing imaginary sounds, my thought leaped back to the girl upstairs.  It was the one remembrance which kept me sane.  It was not the dead, but the living, I had to fear, and it was not in my nature to shrink back from any man.  I could feel the courage returning, the leap of hot blood through my veins as I straightened up.

I risked one more match to make certain of the opening through the wall, dimly glimpsed beyond the berths.  My eyes were not deceived; here was a second wood-supported passage, unblocked so far as I could perceive, but black as pitch.  I held the flaming splinter aloft, anxiously scanning the few feet thus revealed, but as it sputtered out, the red ash dropping to the floor, I felt renewed confidence that I was alone, unobserved.  Whoever those assassins might be, they had departed, leaving only the helpless dead behind.  No doubt they would come again to remove the bodies, to seek refuge in this hidden hole.  But for the moment I was there undiscovered, and must utilize each precious instant for discoveries and escape.  Wild recklessness, a desire to break away from those grewsome surroundings, overcame all caution.  Swiftly as I dared in the dense blackness I crept forward, feeling the smooth wall with eager fingers, my right hand still nervously gripping the revolver butt.  Then I came to the door, similar to the other, although no groping about would reveal the catch, or enable me to force it open.