This was the precipice. George went hurtling over the edge with whirling brain: “Brunger coming down here?” he cried.
“Rather! Now, we three together, old man—”
“When's he coming?” George asked. He could not hear his own voice—the old nightmares danced before his eyes, roared their horrors in his ears.
Bill looked at the clock. “He ought to be here by now. He ought to have arrived—”
The roaring confusion in George's brain went to a tingling silence; through it there came footsteps and a man's voice upon the stairs.
As the tracked criminal who hears his pursuer upon the threshold, as the fugitive from justice who feels upon his shoulder the sudden hand of arrest, as the poor wretch in the condemned cell when the hangman enters—as the feelings of these, so, at this sound, the emotions of my miserable George.
A dash must be made to flatten this hideous doom. Upon a sudden impulse he started forward. “Bill! Bill, old man, I want to tell you something. You don't know what the finding of this cat means to me. It—”
“I do know, old man,” Bill earnestly assured him. “You're splendid, old man, splendid. I never dreamt you were so fond of your uncle. Old man, it means even more to me—it means Margaret and success. Here's Brunger. We three together, George. Nothing shall stop us.”
IV.
The sagacious detective entered. George gave him a limp, damp hand.