A Study in Scarlet (Serial Edition Cover) — page 88: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

80 A STUDY IN SCARLET. shake his nerves and lead him to say something un. guarded. The Boots volunteered to show me the room ; it was on the second floor, and there was a small corm- dor leading up to it. The Boots pointed out the door to me, and was about to go downstairs again, when I saw something that made me feel sickish, in spite of my twenty years’ experience. From under the door there curled a little red ribbon of blood, which had meandered across the passage and formed a little pool along the skirting at the other side. I gave a cry, which brought the Boots back. He nearly fainted when he saw it. The door was locked on the inside, but we put our shoulders to it and knocked it in. ‘The window of the room was open, and beside the window, all huddled up, lay the body of a man in his night-dress. He was quite dead, and had been for some time, for his limbs were } rigid and cold. When we turned him over, the Boots | recognized him at once as being the same gentleman who had engaged the room under the name of Joseph Stangerson. ‘The cause of death was a deep stab in the left side, which must have penetrated the heart. And now comes the strangest part of the affair. What do you suppose was above the murdered manP ” I felt a creeping of flesh, and a presentiment of com- ing horror, even before Sherlock Holmes answered. “The word ‘ Rache,’ written in letters of blood,” he said. “ That was it,” said Lestrade, in an awe-struck Hes. and we were all silent for a while. There was something so methodical and so tacompre- hensible about the deeds of this unknown assassin, that Gomichbooks se