"Yes," he said. It gave me an inexplicable shiver down the back to hear him speak. "But I didn't do it. I didn't cut Windsails down." He fingered the surface of the desk like a lost soul feeling for the latch of Heaven's gate.
"I meant to do it," he went on, "and I had my razor ready. I was going to keep you all in suspense for a bit. And then, suddenly, before I touched it, the lanyard broke. I think Windsails cut off the frayed ends afterwards. He hated us all."
There was a dark stain on the left breast of Day's jacket that seemed to be spreading slowly.
"I came back to tell you," he said, his voice sounding faint and far away. "I don't care what the others think. But this——" Again he fingered the desk.
Within reach of my hand was an electric desk lamp, one of those portable things with a switch at the base. I reached out and turned it on, flooding the room with light.
The desk was there all right, but I was alone.
Carrying the lamp in my hand, I rose and crossed over to examine my purchase again. Yes, there were the words, crossed and recrossed by faintly scratched names and dates, covered by successive layers of varnish, but still plain to read, deep carven in the wood:
DAY IS A SCAB
The room was half full of smoke when I had finished, and the acrid smell of burning presently brought an alarmed housemaid to the threshold.
"It's nothing," I reassured her. "I was only doing a little poker-work on this desk." I replaced the fireiron in the fender, and opened the window to let the smoke out as the maid withdrew.