Even while he stared at me, I found it suddenly necessary that I should rearrange all my ideas. Jervis Fanshawe had not entered into my considerations at all in regard to the murder. I had fixed inevitably upon Arnold Millard—had followed in imagination his every action in the matter; had reasoned out why he should do this or that to the point of actual certainty. And here, in these rooms that I had left locked, was Jervis Fanshawe, whom by no possibility could I believe had had anything to do with the matter. I leaned upon the table, and stared at him; and after a moment or two he came slowly out into the room.
He was so afraid of me, and so appalled at the fact of my coming there at all, that he came slowly towards me, never taking his eyes from my face, and looking at nothing else. It was only when, horribly enough, he stumbled over the feet of the dead man, that he jumped back with a cry, and seemed to recover himself. Then he looked at me again, and over his face stole a smile.
"Why, Charlie—what's wrong?" he whispered; and the whisper seemed to shatter the silences of the place, and to bring us both back in a moment to the hard and stern realities of things.
"How did you get in here?" I demanded.
He did not answer in words; he stared down at the dead man for a moment or two, and while he did so he fumbled in his pockets. Very slowly he drew out something that jingled; still looking at the dead man, he dropped on the table the three keys, tied together with a piece of black tape. I recognized them in a moment as the keys that had been given me when I first paid for the rooms.
He looked at me as though he did not understand the question; looked again at the keys. Then he pointed to the dead man—and I understood. It seemed then as though some extraordinary process went on in my mind, so that old carefully constructed ideas were hurled out of it, and new ones hastily formed. I gasped, and looked at Fanshawe, and looked at the keys; then I cried out at him.—"My God!—you?"
He nodded slowly; it seemed as though he stood there, thinking about something else, and only coming back slowly and with difficulty to the situation he had to face. When at last he began to speak, it was at first in a slow dull whisper, like a man talking to himself, and not realizing that another is listening. It was only later, after the first moment or two, that he began, as it were, to take me into his confidence.
"She seemed to call to me to do it. You remember when she went past me like a spirit in the dark garden—the night we knew the girl was in peril; I first thought of it then. I put it aside for a time; I never had any real courage for such a matter as this. Then I saw the spirit of her again in London here—that Barbara we both had loved, and who died years and years ago. And then I knew clearly enough what I had to do."
He stopped, and looked down at the dead man; it seemed almost as though he went on talking to that ghastly thing that lay at his feet.