the man
must inevitably murder the woman. And Andrew? All through the night
Henley thought of him as he had last seen him, opening the door of the
red house with the tattered creepers climbing over it.

At last, when it was dawn, he went up to bed tired out, after leaving a
written direction to the servant not to call him in the morning. When he
awoke and looked at his watch it was past two o'clock in the afternoon.
He sprang out of bed, dressed, and after a hasty meal, half breakfast,
half lunch, set out towards Chelsea. The day was bright and cold. The
sun shone on the river and sparkled on the windows of the houses on the
Embankment. Many people were about, and they looked cheerful. The weight
of depression that had settled upon Henley was lifted. He thought of the
strange, yet illuminating, idea that had occurred to him in the night,
and now, in broad daylight, it seemed clothed in absurdity. He laughed
at it. Yet he quickened his steps toward the red house with the
tarnished iron gate and the tattered creepers.

But long before he reached it he met a boy sauntering along the
thoroughfare and shouting newspapers. He sang out unflinchingly in the
gay sunshine, "Murder! Murder!" and between his shouts he whistled
a music-hall song gaily in snatches. Henley stopped him and bought a
paper. He opened the paper in the wind, which seemed striving to prevent
him, and cast his eyes over the middle pages. Then suddenly he dropped
it to the ground with a white face, and falteringly signed to a cabman.
The _denouement_ was written. The previous night, in a house on the
Chelsea Embankment, a woman had been done to death, and the murderer had
crept out and thrown himself into the gray, hurrying river.

The woman's name was Olive Beauchamp.

THE END.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Collaborators, by Robert S. Hichens

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