The policeman happened to be taking shelter in the doorway of No. 5. It was a wet night. She stepped back and whispered to him before she crept with a stealthy, springy step up the stairs. Stapley went on, past my rooms, past Murphy’s, to the top floor. He put in his key and opened the door of his set—the fatal set, which had been responsible for so much; the set which had egged on Orion to murder, which had saddled poor Orchard with such a horrid companion—I’ll tell you that some other day—which had seen Jimmy die. He opened the door. There was a bracket lamp on the wall immediately opposite. It was burning feebly, and there was a dark circle on the wall paper behind it, where the oil had sweated. Below the lamp was a little glass which Orion had gilded with a sixpenny bottle of dye. Barbara was close behind Stapley—so close that she could see her own face in the little glass slightly behind his.
He stepped in. She leaned over the banisters and swiftly beckoned. She heard the roar of the streets through the open window on the staircase, and she heard the heavy tread of the policeman’s boots on the wood. Then she glided after Stapley. Before he turned to shut the door she was in the passage alone with him at the top of the big, quiet house, with the policeman coming steadily up the stairs. Her eyes, when later on she told me the scene, were the glowing, deadly eyes of a wild beast. I suppose she must have looked at Stapley in the same way—accusingly, fiercely, without a shimmer of mercy. No doubt she thought of Bob waiting for his trial, of the quiet, narrow life at Norwood which had satisfied her, and which she was in danger of losing. She said crisply:
“A policeman is coming up to arrest you for the murder of Denis Murphy.”
When she saw Stapley’s face she no longer had the least doubt of his guilt.
The policeman came up, puffing a little, to the third flight, and Stapley, taken utterly by surprise, not knowing how much had been found out, never said a single word in defense, never resisted when he was arrested. There wasn’t a tittle of evidence against him. It was a woman’s instinct, only a woman’s instinct, that—hanged him? No; the set spares its victims that. It gave Orion a hint to fling himself out of the window. Only a woman’s instinct. If I had not taken her to that melodrama, Bob Piety would have swung.
“The Play’s the Thing.” Now, wouldn’t that be a splendid title? If only poor Nat had been alive!
Stapley was tried. He made a full confession. The jury, finding his story much too fantastic, brought him in mad, and, so far as I know, he is alive, at Broadmoor at this moment.
It came out in evidence, and on his own showing, that he had been going queer for some time before he stabbed Murphy. He had been reading very hard, and then, of course, those rooms got on his nerves. He exaggerated trifles. For instance, he fixed a certain hour for his laundress to turn up in the morning. He used to get up and wait for her with his watch in his hand, dreading that she would be a minute late. That morning arrival of hers became the one moment of his day. He could think of very little else. Would she come in time to-morrow? Was it worth his while to pay her if she wouldn’t be punctual, if she wasted daily five minutes? Five minutes! Ten sometimes. How much did that mount up to in a month? The woman was deliberately robbing him. He would not stand it. One must draw the line somewhere. He used to beseech her, bully her, raise her money, threaten to sack her. He bribed her with old hats and trousers for her husband. If she would only turn up to time, so that the one hour of the day—that hour of nine—could take its place with the others, sink into comparative insignificance like the rest!
He used to ask other fellows very earnestly—we all remembered it afterward:
“What would you do if your laundress was always five minutes late in the morning? I want practical advice. I don’t want to be hard on the woman; but, then, no one likes to be imposed upon.”