on if I'd
done it in cold blood, if I'd thought it out, determined to gratify my
hatred of the man; if, in short, the deed had been the offspring of my
intelligence, for which I have always had a considerable respect. But to
have been under the control of a Thing, like any navvy, to be a criminal
without the consent of my will--

"I don't know that that fact alone would make life insupportable. But
there are other and sufficient reasons. I shall never get the hideous
sight of Brathland as he doubled up, and his horrid gurgling shriek, out
of my mind this side of the grave. And I am practically cleaned out. You
know how much I have left of my mother's property! It barely covers
what I paid out to-day. There isn't a penny for the girls. They will be
dependent on Strathland--as I should be if I lived; a position for which
I have as little relish as for that of a murderer on the loose. And
should I ever be really safe? If this stinking quartet takes it into its
head to levy annual blackmail, where is the money coming from? I won't
have the others let in while I'm alive. If it did come to that--and of
course it would--I'd get out anyhow, so I may as well go now and save
myself further horrors. Besides, with all our precautions, we may have
overlooked some significant detail, there may have been an eavesdropper,
the undertakers may have had their suspicions--for all I know I may be
arrested to-morrow--well, Jack, what would you do in my place?"

Gwynne shook himself and stood up. "I don't know. I have been feeling as
if I had killed Bratty myself. But I cannot imagine myself committing
suicide--talk about ugly words! In the first place I don't think that
one crime is any reason for committing another, and in the second--"

"It is cowardly! You don't suppose that old standby slipped my mind, do
you? Well, I am a coward. There you have my dispassionate opinion of
myself. I don't see myself in the prisoner's dock, in the graceful act
of dangling from the end of a rope; or, if the judge was inclined to
have pity on the family, of dying in a prison hospital. Even if I
trumped up the necessary fortitude I should be a blacker villain than I
am to bring disgrace upon my five poor girls and the woman that has
promised to marry me, to say nothing of Vicky and yourself. Nor, on the
other hand, do I see myself skulking in some hole abroad with the hue
and cry after me. I have just as little appetite for the role of the
haunted man in c