Toward midnight Topham Vinson arrived with the elaborate sandwiches and even the champagne that he had found awaiting him at home. It was the measure of a born leader; the doctor had not broken his fast since lunch; and in the small hours he once dozed for some minutes in his chair.
But the politician had not the temperament to wait for the telephone to talk to him; he talked repeatedly into the telephone, set a round dozen of myrmidons by the ears, and at last was rightly served by being sent off to Hammersmith to identify the dead body of a defaulting clerk, just recovered from the Thames.
"I'm not coming with you," Dollar had said, even when the description seemed to tally. "Edenborough wouldn't drown himself—and this is my place."
It was a being ten years older who opened his own front door again at daybreak. His face was as gray as the wintry dawn, the whole man bowed and broken. Topham Vinson stood aghast on the step.
The doctor nodded with compressed lips.
"When and where?"
"I don't know. Come in. They're getting up down-stairs; there'll be some tea in a minute."
"For God's sake tell me what you've heard!"
"Haven't I told you? They rang up just after you went. He bought prussic acid yesterday!"