renice _will be at the bottom of
the sea_ with

"Yours, P. C."

While John Gilbart read this there was silence in the stuffy little
room, and for some minutes after. Then he stepped to the mantelpiece
for the match-box and candle. A small ormolu clock ticked there, and
while he groped for the matches he put out a hand to stop the noise,
which had suddenly grown intolerable. He desisted, remembering that he
did not know how the clock worked--that Mrs. Wilcox, who wound it up
religiously on Monday mornings, was proud of it, and--anyway, _that_
wasn't the machine he wanted to stop. He found a match, lit it and held
it close to the letter.

The match burned low, scorched his fingers. He dropped it in the
fender, where it flickered out, just missing the "waterfall" of shavings
with which Mrs. Wilcox decorated her fireplace in the summer months.
He did not light another, but went back to the window and stood there,
quite still.

Down the street to the westward, over the wet roofs still glimmering in
the twilight, one pale green rift divided the heavy clouds, and in that
rift the last of the daylight was dying. Across the way, in the house
facing him, a woman was lighting a lamp. As a rule the inhabitants of
Prospect Place did not draw the blinds of their upper rooms until they
closed the shutters also and went to bed: and Gilbart looked straight
into the little parlour. But he saw nothing.

He was trying--vainly trying--to bring his mind to it. Nothing really
big had happened to him before: and his first feeling,
characteristically selfish, was that this terrible thing had risen up to
alter all the rest of his life. He must disentangle himself, get away
to a distance and have a look at it. His brain was buzzing. Yes, there
it rose, like a black wall between this moment and all the hours to
come; a brute barrier stretching clean across the prospect. Again and
again he brought his mind up to it as you might coax a horse up to a
fence; again and again it refused. Each time in the last few steps his
heart froze, extending its chill until every separate faculty hung back
springless and inert. And there was no getting round!

Why had this happened to _him_ of all people? It never for a moment
occurred to him to doubt Casey's word. He saw it now; hideous as the
deed was, Casey was capable of it--had always been capable of it.
Let it go for a miserable tribute to Casey's honesty in the past that