A room in a boarding house can be horribly still. On the night when Colby came home and saw the trap letter returned, his room was quiet with a deadly, isolated silence in which innumerable small noises from outside came with the sharpness of scratches on a window pane. He heard the squeaking of a car’s brakes blocks away; voices in the street outside; the creak of bed springs somewhere in the house, as someone, reading in bed, shifted his position.
The lamp shed a dismal glow about the room. Its shade was cracked, and an irregular blotch of light was smeared against the figured wall paper. Colby sat on the edge of his bed, twitching a little, while he stared at the letter that had been returned. His brain was exhausted.
Some one walked past the house with measured, sedate footfalls—the walk of a man who is not in a hurry. Colby’s mouth twitched. Of course the house was watched now. He had no chance—none at all!
Heavily, drearily, his worn-out brain essayed one last review. He had foreseen everything, he had taken care of everything, with one exception; but no living man could have foreseen that Nesbit knew the man he had chosen as a victim. Nobody could have known that! Colby repeated it passionately, as a vindication, as an excuse—although there was no one requiring excuses.
The tinny roaring which was unmistakably Nesbit’s car, was not even a surprise when it came. Colby heard it blocks away. He heard it come nearer and stop with squawking brakes before his door. The roaring rumble of its engine ceased. Nesbit’s footsteps sounded crisp and crackling on the cinder walk, and heavy and solid on the porch. He heard Nesbit’s ring.
Minutes later there came a rap on the door, and the landlady’s voice.
“Mr. Colby! Mr. Nesbit’s downstairs to see you,” she said.
Colby’s voice was a croak.
“Tell him to come up,” he replied feebly.
Apathy possessed him. He stared at the little white envelope on the dresser. His eyeballs burned from sleeplessness. His muscles twitched occasionally, without warning. His throat felt dry. He seemed to be moving feverishly amid a myriad thoughts without the possibility of sleep, while his brain was desiccated, dried up, mummified from the lack of rest.