But Ashton-Kirk shook his head.
"On the contrary, the thing seems full of a vague meaning," said he.
"There were seventeen pictures upon the walls of this room; fourteen
have been torn down and destroyed; the other three are undisturbed."
Pendleton gazed at the pictures that remained upon the walls. Two were
of fine looking houses of the colonial type; the third was the
portrait of a man--a man of repulsive, sneering face, heavy with evil
lines and with unusually small eyes.
"If they had destroyed that one it would have had some meaning to me,"
commented Pendleton. "But, as it is, I hardly think I follow you."
"The meaning that I find," replied Ashton-Kirk, "lies in the fact that
the pictures violently used were those of General Wayne only. Mark
that fact. That they were deliberately selected for destruction is
beyond question."
"How do you make that out?"
"It is simple. If this were a mere random stripping of the room of its
pictures, all would have suffered. Look," indicating a spot in the
wall, "here is a place where the plaster is broken. A hook had been
driven here to hold one of the portraits; and the breaking of the
plaster shows that some determination was required to tear the picture
down.
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