Stupefaction held his audience. Not a hand was lifted, not a breath was drawn. For half a second his finger clung to the trigger without pressing it. Then he lowered the weapon.
“I guess I better go out in the hall, where 170 the elevator is,” he said. “Don’t follow me. Stay where you are. You needn’t worry.”
“I’ll bet you ten dollars you don’t do it,” said Fairfax, loudly, as he came to his feet.
“I don’t want your dirty money, blast you,” exclaimed Harvey, without thinking. “Good-by, Nellie. Be good to Phoebe. Tell ’em out in Blakeville that I—oh, tell ’em anything you like. I don’t give a rap!”
He turned and went shambling down the hall, his back very stiff, his ears very red.
It was necessary to step over Rachel’s prostrate form. He got one foot across, when she, crazed with fear, emitted a piercing shriek and arose so abruptly that he was caught unawares. What with the start the shriek gave him and the uprising of a supposedly inanimate mass, his personal equilibrium was put to the severest test. Indeed, he quite lost it, going first into the air with all the sprawl of a bronco buster, and then landing solidly on his left ear where there wasn’t a shred of rug to ease the impact. In a twinkling, however, he was on his feet, apologising to Rachel. But she was crawling away as fast as her hands and knees would carry her. From the dining-room came violent 171 shouts, the hated word “police” dominating the clamour.
He slid through the door and closed it after him. A moment later he was plunging down the steps, disdaining the elevator, which, however fast it may have been, could not have been swift enough for him in his present mood. The police! They would be clanging up to the building in a jiffy, and then what? To the station house!
Half-way down he paused to reflect. Voices above came howling down the shaft, urging the elevator man to stop him, to hold him, to do all manner of things to him. He felt himself trapped.
So he sat down on an upper step, leaned back against the marble wall, closed his eyes tightly, and jammed the muzzle of the revolver against the pit of his stomach.
“I hate to do it,” he groaned, and then pulled the trigger.