For Byrne was certain now that he would have to die before the morning--and in the same mysterious manner, leaving behind him an unmarked body.
The sight of a smashed head, of a throat cut, of a gaping gunshot wound, would have been an inexpressible relief.

It would have soothed all his fears.

His soul cried within him to that dead man whom he had never found wanting in danger.

"Why don't you tell me what I am to look for, Tom?
Why don't you ?" But in rigid immobility, extended on his back, he seemed to preserve an austere silence, as if disdaining in the finality of his awful knowledge to hold converse with the living.
Suddenly Byrne flung himself on his knees by the side of the body, and dry-eyed, fierce, opened the shirt wide on the breast, as if to tear the secret forcibly from that cold heart which had been so loyal to him in life! Nothing! Nothing! He raised the lamp, and all the sign vouchsafed to him by that face which used to be so kindly in expression was a small bruise on the forehead--the least thing, a mere mark.

The skin even was not broken.