Bruton emerged from the room pale and excited. When they had reached the foot of the stairs, he whispered:
“I’ve got it. I’ve got his revolver. I took it out of his coat-pocket. Look! All six chambers are loaded.”
After a drink the two friends, choosing separate rooms, went to bed.
It must have been about three o’clock next morning that Cyril Gascoyne awoke with an intolerable thirst. For a little while he lay wondering where he was and trying to remember the events of the previous day. Like a nightmare they came to him, and with them came a feeling of self-disgust.
Sitting up in bed he groped about for his coat and, taking a box of matches from one of his pockets, struck a light. Some blind instinct made him feel in the right-hand side-pocket to discover if his revolver was still there. The pocket was empty.
In a flash he jumped out of bed and turned on the light.
“Damn him!” he muttered; “he’s got them both now!”
And then his brain, overwrought and dizzied with the fumes of alcohol, began to breed the thoughts and desires of madness.
“So Bruton thought I was going to commit suicide, did he? And he’s tried to outwit me! The damned fool! Why, blast it, if I’d wanted to shoot myself I would have shot myself. Why not? But I’ll show him. He can’t get the better of me—I’m damned if he can.”
He chuckled with insane laughter, and his eyes became deep with cunning. Having turned out the electric light, he lit a candle, noiselessly opened the door, and listened. Not a sound. Yes: breathing—the sound of someone breathing deeply in his sleep. He crept along the passage, stopped and listened again. The sound came from the room on his right, the door of which was open. For a brief second he looked inside: it was Bruton, fast asleep.