ter the better from his point of
view, and their own shut-up house was the one place where he might not
have been found for weeks. And that would have made all the
difference--in the circumstances."

"But what do you know about the circumstances, Uvo?" I could not help
asking a bit grimly; for his air of omniscience always prepared me for
some specious creation of his own fancy. But for once I was misled, and
I knew it from his altered face before I heard his unnatural voice.

"What do I know?" repeated Uvo Delavoye. "Only that one of the
neighbours has just had a wire from Mrs. Royle's people to say that
she's got a son! That's all," he added, seizing a pipe, "but if you
think a minute you'll see that it explains every other blessed thing."

And I saw that so it did, as far as the unfortunate Royle was concerned;
and there was silence between us while I ran through my brief relations
with the dead man and Delavoye filled his pipe.

"I never took to the fellow," he continued, in a callous tone that
almost imposed upon me. "I didn't like his eternal buttonhole, or the
hat on one side, or the awful shade of their beastly blinds, or the
colour of the good lady's hair for that matter! Just the wrong red and
yellow, unless you happen to wear blue spectacles; and if you'd ever
seen them saying good-bye of a morning you'd have wished you were
stone-blind. But if ever I marry--which God forbid--may I play the game
by my wife as he has done by his! Think of his feelings--with two such
things hanging over him--those African accounts on the way as well! Is
he to throw himself on his old friend's mercy? No; he's too much of a
man, or perhaps too big a villain--but I know which I think now. What
then? If there's a hue and cry the wife'll be the first to hear it; but
if he lays a strong false scent, through an honest chap like you, it may
just tide over the days that matter. So it has, in point of fact; but
for me, there'd have been days and days to spare. But imagine yourself
creeping back into your empty hole to die like a rat, and still thinking
of every little thing to prevent your being found!"

"And to keep it from looking like suicide when you were!" said I, with
yet a lingering doubt in my mind.

"Well, then I say you have the finest suicide ever!" declared Uvo
Delavoye. "I only wish I knew when he began to think it all out. Was it
before he called you in to see the tap that didn't turn off? Or was it
the defective tap