The crystals had dissolved in the glass as Stratton held it up and gazed fixedly at its contents, his face, stern and calm, dimly seen in the shadow, while the shape of the vessel he grasped was plainly delineated against the white blotting paper, upon which a circle of bright light was cast by the shaded lamp.
He was not hesitating, but thinking calmly enough. The paroxysm of horror had been mastered, and as a step was faintly heard crossing the court, he was trying to think out whether there was anything else which he ought to do before that cold hand gripped him and it would be too late.
He looked round, set down the glass for a moment by his letters, and thrusting aside the library chair he used at his writing table, he wheeled forward a lounge seat ready to receive him as he sank back, thinking quietly that the action of the terrible acid would perhaps be very sudden.
Anything more?
He smiled pleasantly, for a fresh thought flashed across his mind, and taking an envelope he bent down and directed it plainly, and without the slightest trembling of his hand, to Mrs Brade.
“Poor, gossiping old thing!” he said. “She has been very kind to me. It will be a shock, but she must bear it like the rest.”
He took a solitary five-pound note from his pocketbook, thrust it into the envelope, wrote inside the flap, “For your own use,” and moistened and secured it before placing it with the other letters.
“About nine to-morrow morning she will find it,” he thought, “and then—poor soul! poor soul! The police and—I shall be asleep.”
“God—forgive me!” he said slowly as, after a step in front of the easy-chair he had placed ready, he once more raised the glass, and closing his eyes:
“To Myra,” he said, with a bitter laugh; and it was nearly at his lips when there was a sharp double knock at his outer door.