Walking, now with the stick under his right arm and his left hand in his trousers pocket, he felt something in the pocket. It was a coin. He took it out. It was a penny, undiscovered evidently, and unremoved by the valet.
It was also a reminder of his own poverty stricken condition. His thoughts turned from Rochester and his jokes, to his own immediate and tragic position. The whole thing was his own fault. It was quite easy to say that Rochester had led him along and tempted him; he was a full grown man and should have resisted temptation. He had let strong drink get hold of him; well, he had paid by the loss of his money, to say nothing of the way his self-respect had been bruised by this jester.
Near Buckingham Palace he turned back, walking by the way he had come, and leaving the park at the new gate.
He crossed the plexus of ways where Northumberland Avenue debouches on Trafalgar Square. It was near twelve o’clock, and the first evening papers were out. A hawker with a bundle of papers under his arm and a yellow poster in front of him like an apron, drew his attention; at least the poster did.
“Suicide of an American in London!” were the words on the poster.
Jones, remembering his penny, produced it and bought a paper.
The American’s suicide did not interest him, but he fancied vaguely that something of Rochester’s doings of the night before might have been caught by the Press through the Police news. He thought it highly probable that Rochester, continuing his mad course, had been gaoled.
He was rewarded. Right on the first page he saw his own name. He had never seen it before in print, and the sight and the circumstances made his tongue cluck back, as though checked by a string tied to its root.
This was the paragraph:
“Last night, as the 11.35 Inner Circle train was entering the Temple Station, a man was seen to jump from the platform on to the metals. Before the station officials could interfere to save him, the unfortunate man had thrown himself before the incoming engine. Death was instantaneous.