s curious tastes, and his place, on a Sunday,
was often full of visitors: a cheerful crowd of journalists, scribblers,
painters, experimenters in divers forms of expression. Coming and going
among so many, it was easy enough to pass unperceived; and one afternoon
Granice, arriving before Venn had returned home, found himself alone in
the work-shop, and quickly slipping into the cupboard, transferred the
drug to his pocket.

But that had happened ten years ago; and Venn, poor fellow, was long
since dead of his dragging ailment. His old father was dead, too, the
house in Stuyvesant Square had been turned into a boarding-house, and
the shifting life of New York had passed its rapid sponge over every
trace of their obscure little history. Even the optimistic McCarren
seemed to acknowledge the hopelessness of seeking for proof in that
direction.

"And there's the third door slammed in our faces." He shut his
note-book, and throwing back his head, rested his bright inquisitive
eyes on Granice's furrowed face.

"Look here, Mr. Granice--you see the weak spot, don't you?"

The other made a despairing motion. "I see so many!"

"Yes: but the one that weakens all the others. Why the deuce do you want
this thing known? Why do you want to put your head into the noose?"

Granice looked at him hopelessly, trying to take the measure of his
quick light irreverent mind. No one so full of a cheerful animal life
would believe in the craving for death as a sufficient motive; and
Granice racked his brain for one more convincing. But suddenly he saw
the reporter's face soften, and melt to a naive sentimentalism.

"Mr. Granice--has the memory of it always haunted you?"

Granice stared a moment, and then leapt at the opening. "That's it--the
memory of it... always..."

McCarren nodded vehemently. "Dogged your steps, eh? Wouldn't let you
sleep? The time came when you HAD to make a clean breast of it?"

"I had to. Can't you understand?"

The reporter struck his fist on the table. "God, sir! I don't suppose
there's a human being with a drop of warm blood in him that can't
picture the deadly horrors of remorse--"

The Celtic imagination was aflame, and Granice mutely thanked him for
the word. What neither Ascham nor Denver would accept as a conceivable
motive the Irish reporter seized on as the most adequate; and, as he
said, once one could find a convincing motive, the difficulties of the
case became so many incentives to effort.

"