“Yes, yes; I suppose so. Creatures of habit, Mary. Want any money—any rates or taxes due? Coal cellar all right—want another ton?”
“Oh, no, sir, thank you. I haven’t near got through the last money yet.”
“Mary, you’re a paragon of economy,” said Brettison. “There, that will do now. I’ll sit down and have a chat with my friend till he comes back.”
There was a smile and a courtesy, and the woman withdrew.
“Sit down, my dear boy. No use to make a labour of our task. Not bad quarters, eh? Not to be changed lightly for the locks and bars of The Foreland, eh?”
Stratton looked at him reproachfully.
“Are you not taking all this too lightly?” he said.
“Oh, I hope not. But we shall see. I’m afraid that I should never have done for a judge, Malcolm. I should have let all the prisoners off with light sentences. Ah, here he comes!”
For there was the sound of wheels, a faint creaking, and from where Stratton sat, with his back to the window, he could hear the brushing of a light vehicle against the shrubs, as it was evidently being pushed up to the side door.
Stratton’s first impulse was to turn round and gaze out at the man he had come to see, but he mastered his desire and sat up rigidly, with his eyes fixed upon the door, and the scenes of the past flitting before him in a rapid sequence. Now he was listening to the flushed, coarse looking, brutalised scoundrel, boasting of his position and power to wreck the future of a beautiful, innocent woman; then they were talking fiercely together, and there was the struggle. And, again, that horrible scene—with the smoke gradually spreading through the room, while Barron lay prone upon the carpet, with a little thread of blood slowly trickling down from behind his ear. This gave place, as there was a rustling in the entry, to a picture of the moments when there was another terrible rustling as he dragged the body into the bath-closet and strove so hard to hide all traces of the catastrophe.