“ ‘It’s father,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, my God!’
“I put out my hand to steady her, and she was looking at me with a fixed stare.
“ ‘Don’t you understand?’ she muttered, hoarsely, and swallowing all the time. ‘Don’t you understand? Jack has been here to-night.’
“ ‘Jack!’ I looked at her foolishly. ‘Jack!’
“And then her full meaning struck me.
“ ‘How did that man find out?’ she whispered. ‘And who is he?’
“ ‘I don’t know. I’ll go and ask him.’ I was still trying to adjust this new development—and her next words seemed to come from a great distance.
“ ‘Do something. For God’s sake—do something.’
“Then she turned and left me, and I watched her go up the stairs, walking stiffly and clinging to the banisters.
“So Jack had been there! And old Marley was dead! Murdered! Hit on the head with a poker. And Jack had been there. It’s only in romantic fiction that the reader is expected to assume the impossibility of the hero committing a crime, owing to the extreme beauty of his nature. And this wasn’t romantic fiction. It was hard, brutal reality. The two facts stood there, side by side, in all their dazzling simplicity. Jack’s nature was not supremely beautiful. He was an ordinary man, with the devil of a temper when it was roused.