--arranged a quite inert
form upon the couch. The doctor bent over him.

"Is he dead?" Constance heard Alan ask.

"Not yet," the doctor answered; "but it won't be long, now."

"There's nothing you can do for him?"

The doctor shook his head.

"There's nothing you can do to make him talk--bring him to himself
enough so that he will tell what he keeps threatening to tell?"

The doctor shrugged. "How many times, do you suppose, he's been drunk
and still not told? Concealment is his established habit now. It's an
inhibition; even in wandering, he stops short of actually telling
anything."

"He came here--" Alan told briefly to the doctor the circumstances of
the man's coming. The doctor moved back from the couch to a chair and
sat down.

"I'll wait, of course," he said, "until it's over." He seemed to want
to say something else, and after a moment he came out with it. "You
needn't be afraid of my talking outside ... professional secrecy, of
course."

Alan came back to Constance. Outside, the gray of dusk was spreading,
and within the house it had grown dark; Constance heard the doctor turn
on a light, and the shadowy glow of a desk lamp came from the library.
Alan walked to and fro with uneven steps; he did not speak to her, nor
she to him. It was very quiet in the library; she could not even hear
Luke's breathing now. Then she heard the doctor moving; Alan went to
the light and switched it on, as the doctor came out to them.

"It's over," he said to Alan. "There's a law covers these cases; you
may not be familiar with it. I'll make out the death
certificate--pneumonia and a weak heart with alcoholism. But the
police have to be notified at once; you have no choice as to that.
I'll look after those things for you, if you want."

"Thank you; if you will." Alan went with the doctor to the door and
saw him drive away. Returning, he drew the library portieres; then,
coming back to Constance, he picked up her muff and collar from the
chair where she had thrown them, and held them out to her.

"You'll go now, Miss Sherrill," he said. "Indeed, you mustn't stay
here--your car's still waiting, and--you mustn't stay here ... in this
house!"

He was standing, waiting to open the door for her, almost where he had
halted on that morning, a few weeks ago, when he had first come to the
house in answer to Benjamin Corvet's summons; and she was where she had
stood to receive him. Memory of how he had looked