And then all at once I felt that I could not do it. I turned away, sick at heart; I began to invent excuses why I should not do it. I had soiled my hands once with blood in my own cause; I would not do it again for another. I was afraid; I weakly told myself that another way would be found, and that Murray Olivant's triumph would be cut short. But not by me.
I went away into the busier streets, and I walked about for more than an hour. It was quite dark when I got back at last to the place, and even then I think I had made up my mind that I could not do it. I found myself praying, as I went up the stairs, that he might insult me—might even attack or strike me—so that I might be forced to do the thing, and to do it not in cold blood. If only it might be a matter of fighting—some desperate business that should nerve my arm for the one necessary moment—then I would not mind.
I climbed the stairs, and reached the door of the rooms. As I fumbled for my key, I suddenly discovered that the door was open a couple of inches; I put my hands against it, and went quietly in. The place was in darkness; but I remember that I had that curious feeling that one has, even in the darkness, that there was some one there near me. I called out the man's name again, as I had done before—
"Mr. Olivant! Mr. Olivant!"
Only the echoes floated back to me; I could not understand what the silence meant. At last with trembling fingers I got out a match-box, and struck a light, and looked about me.
I saw that the table had been set out with a decanter and a glass; there was a half-smoked cigar lying there, and it had burnt a hole in the faded table-cloth. A candlestick had been overturned, and the candle had rolled away a few inches from it. I set them upright, and put the match to the candle. In doing that I came to the edge of the table, and mechanically looked over; I started back with a cry.
Murray Olivant was there in his own rooms, after all. But he lay stiff and stark, with his face upturned to the ceiling, and his dead eyes staring up at me. He was stone dead; his hand still gripped the knife that had been plunged straight into his breast, as though in his death agony he would have torn it out.
I was too late; some one had been there before me.