Mr. Croucher had seldom found it easier to tell the truth, and he made the most of his opportunity.
"I felt as if I was the gal," said he. "Shouldn't wonder if I dreamt I was 'er to-night!"
"Ah! I always find myself on the inside," said Dollar, with extraordinary gusto. "I'd much rather have been the girl. She had the open street behind her, and the street-lamps; he had only his own handiwork in the dark, and hardly room enough to step out of the way of it. She got away, too, whereas he had to make away with himself. But I always would rather be the victim; he doesn't know what's coming; and it's not a thousandth part as bad as—the other thing—when it does come.... I'm sorry, Croucher! You shouldn't have asked me to leave you the book; but there's nothing like looking at a thing from all sides, and it may console you to know that you've perspired over the best description of a murder ever written."
Yet that was not the last of their morbid conversations; they would hardly be five minutes together before the noxious subject would crop up, nearly always through some reluctant yet irresistible allusion on the patient's part. The doctor might come in overflowing with deliberate gaiety; there was something about him that set the bulbous eyes rolling with uneasy cunning, the cockney tongue wagging in its solitary strain, as it were under protest from the beaded brow.
On one occasion Dollar was the prime offender. It was the day after Croucher's introduction to De Quincey and the first bad night spent by anybody in the Chamber of Peace. He declared he had not slept a wink, and was advised to get up and go for a walk.
"Alone?" said Croucher in a low voice.
"Why not? This isn't prison, and I never hear you cough. You are not going to die just yet, Croucher!"
"I 'ope nobody is, not 'ere," said Croucher, with a horrid twitch. "I feel as it might buck me up—a breff of air on a nice fine day like this." His eyes rolled undecidedly, and the oil ran out of his voice. "But it ain't no fun goin' out alone."
"Haven't you any friends you could go and see?"
"No!" cried Croucher, with an emphasis that pulled him up. "I—I might write a letter, though—if you could spare me a bit o' paper wiv the address."