He stood quite motionless, listening to the taxi as it whirred away. And even after he ceased to hear it he did not move. He was gazing straight before him, and his eyes were the eyes of a man in a dream. They saw naught.
Stiffly at last he moved, and something like a shudder went through him.
He crossed the room heavily, with the gait of one stricken suddenly old.
He sat down again at the writing-table, and took up the pen that he had
dropped—how long ago!
He even wrote a few words slowly, laboriously, still with that fixed look in his eyes. Then quite suddenly he was assailed by a violent tremor. He pushed back his chair with a sharp exclamation, half-rose, then as swiftly flung himself forward and lay across the table, face downwards, gasping horribly, almost choking. His hands were clenched, and hammered upon the papers littered there. The pen rolled unheeded over the polished wood and fell upon the floor.
Seconds passed into minutes. Gradually the bony fists ceased their convulsive tattoo. The laboured breathing grew less agonized. The man's rigid pose relaxed. But still he lay with his arms outspread and his head bowed between them, a silent image of despair.
Slowly the minutes crawled by. Down in the street below a newsboy was yelling unintelligibly, and in the distance a barrel-organ jangled the latest music-hall craze; but he was deep, deep in an abyss of suffering, very far below the surface of things. There was something almost boyishly forlorn in his attitude. With his face hidden, he looked pathetically young.
The sound of the opening door recalled him at last, and he started upright. It was Holmes with the evening paper.
The man spied the pen upon the floor and stooped for it. Bertrand stretched out a quivering hand, took it from him, and made as if he would resume his writing. But the pen only wandered aimlessly over the paper, and in a moment fell again from his nerveless fingers.
Holmes paused. Bertrand sat with his head on his hand as if unaware of him.
"Can I get you anything, sir?" he ventured.
Bertrand made a slight movement. "If I might have—a little brandy," he said, speaking with obvious effort.