He watched a figure detach itself from the mass swirling round a debouching omnibus. It was a little black figure, just clearly enough defined to show that it was a man. Because it was a man it had been a fool. Because it had been a fool it had dark chambers in its 103 life which it would never willingly open. But it had doubtless got something for its folly. It might have lost more than it had gained, but it could probably reckon up and say, “At least I had my fun.”
And he had had none. He had squandered his whole life on a single act of insanity which even in the action had produced nothing but disgust. He hadn’t merely swindled himself; he had committed a kind of suicide which made death silly and grotesque. The one thing that could save him a scrap of dignity—and such a sorry scrap!—would be going to the devil by the shortest way.
He had come to the office to begin. He would begin by the means that seemed obvious. Now that going to the devil was a task he saw, as he had not seen hitherto, how curiously few were the approaches that would take him there. Song being only an accompaniment, he was limited to the remaining two of the famous and familiar trio.
Very well! Limited as he was he would make the most of them. Knowing something of their merits he knew there was a bestial entertainment to be had from both. It was a kind of entertainment which his cursed fastidiousness had always loathed; but now his reckoning would be different. If he got anything he should not feel so wastefully thrown away. He would be selling himself first and making his bargain afterwards; but some meager balance would stand to his credit, if credit it could be called. When the devil had been reached the world he knew would pardon him because it was the devil, and not—what it was in truth—an idiotic state of nerves.
At the minute when Letty was leaping to her feet to take her stand he swung away from the window. First going to Mr. Radbury’s door he closed it softly. Luckily the old man, an inheritance from his, Allerton’s, father, was deaf and incurious. Like most clerks who had clerked their way up to seventy he was buried in clerking’s little round. He wouldn’t come in till the letters were finished, certainly not for an hour, and by that time Allerton would be.... He almost smiled at the old man’s probable consternation on finding him so before the middle of the day. Any time would be bad enough; but in the high forenoon....
He went to a cabinet which was said to have found its way via Bordentown from the furnishings of Queen Caroline Murat. Having opened it he took out a bottle and a glass. On the label of the bottle was a kilted Highlander playing on the pipes. A siphon of soda was also in the cabinet, but he left it there. What he had to do would be done more quickly without its mitigation.
While Allerton was making these preparations Judson Flack, in pajamas and slippers, was standing in his toy kitchen, looking helplessly at a small gas stove. It was the hour in the middle of the morning at which he was accustomed to be waked with the information that his coffee and eggs were ready. The forenoon being what he called his slack time he found the earlier part of it most profitably used for sleep.
“Curse the girl!”