The tall clock in the corner had run down. The gas fire made no sound. No room could have been stiller.
The day was mending toward its close, and the late level sun flooded in from the windows, as if to make up for lost time and eight months of exclusion. The light of the fire lit up the room’s other side, and between the two riots of light and of warmth the man sat dejected, distraught and shivering—alone with his self-knowledge, his fear and his gruesome task.
Where was the damnatory sheet of paper? In this room in all human probability. Its ink had scarcely dried when Bransby had died, and it had not been found on the body; Stephen Pryde had made sure of that.
For eight terrible months he had schemed and tortured to get here and find it—even playing housebreaker in his desperation. Yet now here at long last he shrank inexplicably from beginning the search. Why? That he knew not in the least. But, for one thing, he was hideously cold, almost cramped with chill. The arms of the chair felt like ice. Little billows of cold seemed to buffet against his face. The room had been shut up and fireless for so long. His feet ached with cold, almost they felt paralyzed. His legs were quivering, and so cold! And his hands were blueing.
At last he forced his numb frame from the seat.
He looked about with frightened, agonized eyes.
No paper lay on any one of the tables apparently. The wastepaper basket! He seized it with a hand that shook as if palsied. Oh—a crumpled whiteness lay on the bottom of the basket. Pray Heaven—he thrust in a fumbling hand—and gave a cry of disappointment. This was not paper, but some bit of soft cloth. He jerked it out impatiently, and then, when he saw what it was, dropped it on the table with a sharp sigh; a handkerchief—Helen’s.
From table to table he went, examining each article on them, searching every crevice. Each drawer he searched again and again. He looked in every possible place, and, as the anxious searchers for lost things have from time immemorial, in many impossible places. He overlooked nothing—he was sure of that. Again and again he searched the tables and then researched them.
With a puzzled frown he rose and stared about the room. Then he moved about it slowly and carefully, looking for some possible hidden cupboard. He sounded the wainscoting. He scrutinized the ceiling, he pulled at the seats of the chairs.
Finally he halted before the bookcase and stood staring at it a long time. He drew out one or two volumes. Could the thin sheet be behind one? But the dust came out thickly, and he put them back. Something seemed to pull him away, and drive him back to the table. Why, of course, it must be there. Where else would the dead man have hidden it? Nowhere, of course. Why waste time looking anywhere else? Again he began the weary business all over. Again and again his cold, trembling hands felt and searched, and his eyes, wild now and baffled, peered and studied. Almost he prayed. His breath came in gasps. Sweat stood on his forehead and around his clenched lips.