“It’s all right,” he said... “They’re all here.”
He snatched up a box of matches, and carrying the letters to the grate, thrust them between the bars and set light to them. Hayhurst watched with him while they burnt, dividing his attention between the flaming papers and the intent set face of the man who crouched before the hearth, watching, watching, while the letters that had cost much money and a man’s life were swiftly reduced to ashes. When only the charred and blackened paper remained, Colonel Grey took the ashes up in his hands and crumbled them to powder. He drew a long breath of relief.
“They’ve cost dear,” he muttered,—“too dear... But they’ll do no more harm.”
He rose and, turning, stared into the young man’s eyes.
“A moment since,” he said, and his voice trembled with an emotion he could not altogether subdue, “it seemed to me that nothing mattered outside that,” and he pointed to the ashes in the grate. “Now I’m back in the world again, and I want to know how you came to have them in your possession.”
“It’s a fairly long story,” Hayhurst said. “It’s taken weeks to bring to a successful issue.”
The Colonel shook his head.
“Don’t you get into the habit of drinking before breakfast, my boy,” he said.
Tom Hayhurst laughed. His eye had certainly travelled towards a syphon and bottle of whisky that stood on the washstand.
“You don’t know what I’ve been through,” he said. “Besides, I have breakfasted. And I’ve been strict teetotal practically ever since I’ve been working with Lawless. It was a condition he made in taking me on.”