Directly afterward, as it seemed, he withdrew his head and looked down into Mr. Chown's pale face, and his own had lost its ruddy color. Then, coming down as he had gone up, much to the astonishment and curiosity of Mr. Chown's two juniors and several legal-looking personages who had arrived upon the scene and gathered in quite a little crowd upon the cobblestones—he said in a low tone, as he drew the former gentleman apart:
"You were right. Whether it was done last night or more recently, it has been done, and thoroughly. With a new-looking revolver. He has it in his hand!"
"Poor old gentleman, I could swear that what he did he has been driven to do, through despair and debt and misery.... 'Mr. William will be my ruin, Chown!' he said to me only three days ago. And he has been his ruin, sir!" said Mr. Chown, blowing his nose with a flourish, and wiping his eyes furtively. "His ruin, Mr. William has been.... You may depend upon that!"
Said the young man from North Germany, pulling on his shabby overcoat:
"The table is covered with papers, and the safe facing the window is open.... Do you think——"
"I don't think—I know! He had a kind of swooning fit a week back, when the crash came, and a Receiving Order in Bankruptcy was made against him on the petition of his creditors. He was a long time coming round—and I stayed by him while the caretaker went to fetch a hackney-cab—for I'd been called, being a sort of favorite with him, and having known him for years. He'd been robbed and plundered then, because he groaned it out to me; and he pointed to that safe, and told me that it had been gutted by means of false keys—the Bramah he always wore on his watch-riband having been got at and copied. 'All the cash I had left in the world, Chown, besides seven thousand in Trust Securities! ... It's my punishment for having been near and hard to others that I might be generous to him!' Are you going!"
The shaggy young man, crimson to the lining-edge of the old gray wideawake he had pulled over his brows after buttoning his overcoat, made an incoherent sound in his throat, and swung abruptly round upon his heel. The reflection had occurred to him: "He'd have been generous to me if he'd waited to have seen me—and blown out my brains before scattering his own; pfui!—over that table and all the papers!" But he did not voice it aloud.
"Leave me your address," said the kindly-hearted Mr. Chown, "and—it's not business to say you may trust me!—but I'll undertake to bring your name before the Official Receiver—for you're one of the principal creditors—provided what you've told me can be proved...."
"I suppose you know that—dead man's writing when you see it?" said the other, swinging round on Mr. Chown with no very pleasant look.
"As well as I know my own!" retorted Mr. Chown, nodding back.