Her surmise was correct. She had not to wait many minutes. The gate swung open, and the barrister staggered out. The porter looked out after him for a few seconds, and then closed the door again.
Hudson did not perceive her. A new mood was on him. He walked slowly along Fleet Street westwards, his eyes turned to the ground.
Suddenly a fantastic idea seized his ever-changing mind. He would go down Devereux Court. He would look at the doorway in which he had first found Mary Grimm.
Susan Riley followed him afar off, like a vulture waiting till its prey fall.
At last he came to the dark doorway, and then followed a strange scene, which the observer, not having the clue to it, merely set down to the unreasoning frenzy of one mad with drink.
The poor wretch sobbed aloud. He threw out his arms towards the door, and kissed the panels against which the young girl had crouched in that summer evening long ago. Then with a cry he cast himself on the ground and kissed the stones on which her feet had trod.
It often happens that when a mind is in the condition his was in then, exalted by disease, it will for a moment become unnaturally clear and acute, capable of suffering impossible to the sane. So there arose suddenly to his crazed mind so vivid a vision of his past—of what might have been—of what was, so terrible a contrast, that in his anguish and despair he deliberately dashed his head violently three times against the stone column of the house; then he rose up to his full height, the blood streaming down his features, gazed wildly round for a few seconds, and fell down on his face, insensible.
Susan Riley, pale, calm, with a bitter smile on her mouth, watched all this. Then she went to him, turned his face upwards, and gazed at it with the same unmoved expression; that once noble face, now distorted, hideous, with the locks steeped with blood lying on the brow, and the red stream trickling over it.
"Faugh!" she said to herself, "what a beast a man can make of himself!" Then she deliberated for a short time what she should do next.