Apparently Thorndyke had seen me from the window as I crossed the Walk, for, when I reached the landing, I found him standing in the open doorway of his chambers; and at the sight of him, whatever traces of unreasonable resentment may have lingered in my mind, melted away instantly. He grasped my hand with almost affectionate warmth, and looking at me earnestly and with the most kindly solicitude, said:
“I am glad you have come, Mayfield. I couldn’t bear to think of you alone in your chambers, haunted by this horrible tragedy.”
“You have heard, then—about Barbara, I mean?”
“Yes. Miller called and told me. Of course, he is righteously angry that she has escaped, and I sympathize with him. But for us—for you and me—it is a great deliverance. I was profoundly relieved when I heard that she was gone; that the axe had fallen once for all.”
“Yes,” I admitted, “it was better than the frightful alternative of a trial and what would have followed. But still, it was terrible to see her, lying dead, and to know that it was my hand—the hand of her oldest and dearest friend—that had struck the blow.”
“It was my hand, Mayfield, not yours that actually struck the blow. But even if it had been yours instead of your agent’s, what could have been more just and proper than that retribution should have come through the hand of the friend and guardian of that poor murdered girl?”
I assented with a shudder to the truth of what he had said, but still my mind was too confused to allow me to see things in their true perspective. Barbara, my friend, was still more real to me than Barbara the murdress. He nodded sympathetically enough when I explained this, but rejoined, firmly:
“You must try, my dear fellow, to see things as they really are. Shocking as this tragedy is, it would have been immeasurably worse if that terrible woman had not received timely warning. As it is, the horrible affair has run its course swiftly and is at an end. And do not forget that if the axe has fallen on the guilty its menace has been lifted from the innocent. Madeline Norris and Anthony Wallingford will sleep in peace to-night, free from the spectre of suspicion that has haunted them ever since Harold Monkhouse died. As to the woman whose body you found this morning, she was a monster. She could not have been permitted to live. Her very existence was a menace to the lives of all who came into contact with her.”
Again, I could not but assent to his stern indictment and his impartial statement of the facts.
“Very well, Mayfield,” said he. “Then try to put it to yourself that, for you, the worst has happened and is done with. Try to put it away as a thing that now belongs to the past and is, in so far as it is possible, to be forgotten.”