he why and the wherefore
when he is a little stronger. I think, Smith, you and I can leave him
alone now. I am walking back to college; if you are coming in that
direction, we can have a chat."

But it was little chat that they had upon their homeward path. Smith's
mind was too full of the incidents of the evening, the absence of the
mummy from his neighbour's rooms, the step that passed him on the stair,
the reappearance--the extraordinary, inexplicable reappearance of the
grisly thing--and then this attack upon Lee, corresponding so closely to
the previous outrage upon another man against whom Bellingham bore a
grudge. All this settled in his thoughts, together with the many little
incidents which had previously turned him against his neighbour, and the
singular circumstances under which he was first called in to him. What
had been a dim suspicion, a vague, fantastic conjecture, had suddenly
taken form, and stood out in his mind as a grim fact, a thing not to be
denied. And yet, how monstrous it was! how unheard of! how entirely
beyond all bounds of human experience. An impartial judge, or even the
friend who walked by his side, would simply tell him that his eyes had
deceived him, that the mummy had been there all the time, that young Lee
had tumbled into the river as any other man tumbles into a river, and
that blue pill was the best thing for a disordered liver. He felt that
he would have said as much if the positions had been reversed. And yet
he could swear that Bellingham was a murderer at heart, and that he
wielded a weapon such as no man had ever used in all the grim history of
crime.

Hastie had branched off to his rooms with a few crisp and emphatic
comments upon his friend's unsociability, and Abercrombie Smith crossed
the quadrangle to his corner turret with a strong feeling of repulsion
for his chambers and their associations. He would take Lee's advice,
and move his quarters as soon as possible, for how could a man study
when his ear was ever straining for every murmur or footstep in the room
below? He observed, as he crossed over the lawn, that the light was
still shining in Bellingham's window, and as he passed up the staircase
the door opened, and the man himself looked out at him. With his fat,
evil face he was like some bloated spider fresh from the weaving of his
poisonous web.

"Good-evening," said he. "Won't you come in?"

"No," cried Smith fiercely.

"No? You are busy as ever? I wanted to