"Merridew," I said heavily, "you'll disappear to-morrow morning ... or——"
"Shall I?" he bragged falteringly....
"And you won't come back. I shall stay here to-night and put you into the train myself."
"Then you'll have to sleep in the bath—and you should know by this time how small that is," came from his lips.
And yet it came only from his lips. His terrified heart had no part in it. His only chance now was to have screamed aloud.
But he did not scream. Instead, he stooped swiftly, caught up the poker, and struck at my head with it.
It was then that the thunder-clap came, and that I was James Herbert Jeffries, whole, and a murderer. Swiftly as Archie and I came together the halves of that Giant came together. Instinctively I had guarded my head, perhaps realising—I cannot say—that a single drop of blood might mean for me precisely what I intended to do to him; but it mattered little whether blood blinded my eyes or not. Another redness gorged me, and then, my mind became whitely blind. As colours are lost on a disc that revolves, so all my plans and preparations spun and mingled. All was there, yet nothing was there. For an instant my visual memories of that pleasant, dimity-papered apartment stood separate; my own old experiences and new divinations also stood separate; I saw ahead, three or four minutes ahead, his struggles in my great arms, my left arm about his ankles, my right hand over his mouth, the red of the woollen bell-rope against his white neck ... and then all wheeled hideously together....
I was upon him, smothering him with my bulk, and wondering even as I bore him backwards to the door whether I myself was bleeding....
The fourth stage was characterised throughout by an extraordinary quietness. There was the light sound of the turning of paper in it, for I had to search in a pile of old books and papers for his shorthand pad and to make sure I had the right one—I had to take from my breast pocket another sheet of paper and to glance at that also to make sure that it also was the right one—and then I had to approach the bedroom door and to drop this into his pocket....