Sometimes during these days I would doubt, too, if it were worth while—this task I had set myself—of hunting down the murderer, for it could no longer avail to help Winters and must only bring more trouble in its trail. The authorities would be content to let it pass with the death of Winters into the long category of undetermined crimes and why should not I also? and I would be tempted to call Miles from his work, but always something—a vague fear I wanted quieted, held me back. I would recall many things that had happened and that had made little impression on me at the time, but which seemed now in the hours of my solitude and depression to be fraught with some strange significance. That speech of Littell's to the jury in which he had described the murderer as a friend of White's, and his strange words of admonition to me at our dinner, and the refusal of Miles to let me longer share in his work, and the presence of the detective, lurking near our club when my friends took their leave, what did it all mean? Was there something in the background which I did not know and which they did not wish me to learn? I feared for that which I knew not and which was coming with a fear that gripped my heart, yet I would not lift a hand to stay it, but waited for it with passive submission.
Such thoughts, such feelings as these possessed me as I sat alone in my office this gloomy afternoon waiting for Miles. After a silence that seemed ages he had at last sought me and I knew he had succeeded in his task and was coming to tell me of it. As the hour drew near for his arrival my vague fears grew stronger and would not be shaken off. I had a premonition of evil—I tried and tried again to convince myself that I was morbid and fanciful, but the thoughts and the fears would return and each time with deeper and more sinister meaning. They crowded on me as I sat bowed over my desk till I could bear them no longer and I got up and walked to the window and, pressing my head against the cool glass, stood looking with unconscious eyes through the rain into the darkening court. How long I stood thus I don't know; every faculty was absorbed in the one dreadful thought: "What if Miles has discovered the murderer and is coming to tell me he is some one I know, a friend"—I could get no further, just that train of thought, never finished, but repeated and repeated, till cold and trembling I turned at last from the window. As I did so I faced the detective; the hour had come. There was just a moment of hesitation, and then I steadied myself.
"Well," I said, "what news."
"Let us sit down," he replied, "it is a long story."
I walked to my desk and resumed my chair, and he seated himself opposite to me. By this time the room was in darkness, except for the flickering light of the fire, and though I tried to study his face I could not do so for the shadows.
"Well!" I repeated,—for he had not answered me,—"what news?" He leaned forward and put his hand on my arm, but I shook it off and straightened myself—"What news?" I said again sharply, though my voice was hoarse and my words hardly articulate.
"I have discovered the murderer," he replied.
I tried to ask the name, but could not, and turned away to look into the fire and watch with abstracted gaze the little yellow tongues of flame as they darted here and there over the dark surface of the coal. They seemed to me to be like tiny serpents at play and I smiled at their antics, but underneath in the dull glow of the deep fire I found a silent sympathy with my mood and there my gaze lingered while I thought.
The secret I had worked so long and hard to know was mine for the asking and I was silent. I could feel Miles was looking at me and could read my thoughts and thought me a coward, but what did it matter to me then? I must think if I could think. A man may stop and wait and still not be a coward—and so we sat in silence. At last something, perhaps it was pity, made him offer a last chance of escape.
"I alone know the name of that man," he said; "and I need never tell it."