time Mildred said in her letter she'd see
him there. She had added that, if he did not keep the appointment, she'd
expose him--his crime in Pursuit."

"I see," Hastings said, on the end of her cold, metallic utterance, and
took from his pocket the flap of grey envelope. "Is this the flap of
that envelope; or, better still, are these fragments of words and the
word 'Pursuit' in your daughter's handwriting?"

"I've examined them already," she said. "They are my daughter's
writing."

Her lips were suddenly thick, taking on that appearance of abnormal
wetness which had so revolted him before.

"And I say what you've just said!" she supplemented, her eyebrows high
upon her forehead. "Tom Wilton killed my daughter. And, when I went to
his office--I was sure then that he'd be afraid to harm me so soon after
Mildred's death--I accused him of the murder. He took it with a laugh.
He said I could look at it as a warning that----"

"Wait!"

The interruption came from Wilton.

"I'm going to make a statement about this thing!" he ground out, his
voice coarse and rasping.

Hastings hung upon him with relentless gaze.

"What have you got to say?"

"Much!" returned Wilton. "I'm not going to let myself be ruined on this
charge because of a mistake of my youth--mistake, I say! I'm about to
tell you the story of such suffering, such misfortune, as no man has
ever had to endure. It explains that tragedy in Pursuit; it explains my
life; it explains everything. I didn't murder that boy Dalton. I struck
in self-defence. But the twenty-nine wounds on his body----"

He paused, preoccupied; he was thinking less of his hearers than of
himself. It was at that point, Hastings thought afterwards, that he
began to lose himself in the ugly enjoyment of describing his cruelty.
It was as if the horrors to which he gave voice subjected him to a
specious and irresistible charm, equipped him with a spurious courage, a
sincere indifference to common opinion.

"There is," he said, "a shadow on my soul. My greatest enemy is hidden
in my own mind.

"But I've fought it, fought it all my life. You may say the makeshifts
I've adopted, the strategy of my resistance, my tactics to outwit this
thing, do me little credit. I shall leave it to you to decide. Results
speak for themselves. I have broken no law; there is against me nothing
that would bring upon me the penalty of man's laws."

He wedged himself more closely against the edge of the table,