"He didn't — quite," said — Bennett, hoping he was telling the truth. "They think they can pull him through. Warm water: where's the bathroom?"
She only nodded, and opened a door just behind her. There was an ancient top-heavy geyser-bath in the dingy oilcloth room. With steady fingers she struck a match; the gas lit up with a hollow whoom, and little yellow-blue flames under the tank flickered on her face as she took the bowl. "Towels," she said. "You'll want those. Sorry to be such a little fool. I'll come back with you. But. "
"Stay here. They'll be bringing him out in a minute. Easier not to watch that."
They exchanged a glance, and suddenly she said a queer irrelevant thing. She said: "I might be a murderer, you know."
When he went back to the other room Masters was standing motionless, the note half crumpled-up in his hand. He took the bowl of water over, and held it steadily at Dr. Wynne's direction. "They'll pull him through." Did he hope that? Better for him to die. Better that the nervous, restless, tortured man now beginning to twist and gasp on the floor should go out under Dr. Wynne's fingers than live to step into a dock for the murder of Lord Canifest. He would be cleanly dead, and blessed or damned, before the law could go fumbling with its greasy rope and splashing mud on names. Bennett tried to imagine what had happened last night "I followed him home to argue with him" — after Bohun had seen Canifest at the newspaper office. But all he could see was the water turning slowly red in the washbowl.
When at last he was instructed to put it down, he heard Masters' voice.
"That's it, then," said the chief inspector heavily. "That's why. But how could we be expected to know? He came up here, got that revolver out of the drawer there," Masters pointed; "and sat down. It took him a long time to write that note. Look at the long and short spaces between the sentences. I suppose this is his writing?" Masters rubbed his forehead. "Well. Then what did he mean by this? He had it in one hand-used two hands to put the gun against his chest and it fell out when we picked him up."
He extended in his palm what resembled a small triangular piece of silver, cracked along one side as though it had been broken off. Masters held it out briefly, and then clenched his fist.
"May I ask," said a thin cool voice just behind Masters, "whether there is any hope?"
"I don't know, sir."