Whittaker cleared his throat; and the sound startled the room as thoroughly as though it had been a shot. It drew the line at conversation and movement. Across the stillness Whittaker’s first words assumed an enlarged importance.

“As I’ve told you, this is a day to day record of my life for the past twelve or fifteen years.” By a motion of his hand he indicated to them a thick, flexible, thin-paper notebook, bound in tooled suÈde. “Tonight I am taking a leaf from a day two years ago, June 19, 1929. I recall the day vividly; and I can quite imagine that Markham does. (We’ll say Markham—the real name needn’t figure until we go into print.)

“‘Markham called me early this evening to say he must see me immediately. I was engaged for a theatre party, and did not wish to disappoint my hostess, but Markham was obstinate and I yielded. He lives only a matter of minutes from Thorngate. When he appeared it was more than obvious that something was wrong. He was pale, his eyes bloodshot, and his voice somewhere in his shoes. It seems he is being blackmailed on two counts, an old one and a new one; the new one being a mistress, and therefore dangerous to his family; the old one being a strange case of murder, and therefore more dangerous to himself. It is the murder that I consider worth recounting.

“‘Markham is the son, only son, of old Markham who once broke the bank at Monte Carlo. There is wildness in the family. The boy grew up higgledy-piggledy in a part of New York that was rapidly changing from good to bad and bad to worse. Watched with less than half an eye by a succession of uninvestigated nurses and governesses, when they could be afforded at all, Markham naturally and easily became a member of a boy’s gang in the block; and this gang of children grew up to be the real thing. He was not able to break with them, even if he had cared to do so. They bled his father by way of him. They led him by gradual stages into mischief, into badness and into sin. The day came when, owing one too many grand to some card racketeers working the steamship lines to Havana, he was ready to accept payment for murder.

“‘A jet-black night in midwinter found him entering an apparently abandoned shack in a lonely curve of the Hackensack on the barren flats outside Newark. Nothing for miles but snow-drifted meadows and a black river turgidly rolling seaward.’”

“A style worthy of the American Institute,” Julian murmured to Joel, “where vocabulary counts—I mean wordiness.”

“Hush, Julian! Your uncle’s a member.”

“That’s how I know.”

“‘The single room, into which Markham crept upward by way of a loose floor board, reeked of stale tobacco smoke, soiled clothes, and an odd sweet odor that he had long ago learned to recognize as opium. Knife in hand, he settled against the wall near the locked door to await his victim’s home-coming. There were mice about. He identified mice. And a branch blowing against the window-pane. That was easy. But there was another sound, persistent and regular—like, like breathing. Breathing! Good God, it was breathing. The smuggler wasn’t abroad smuggling, according to plan. The cold sweat broke out on Markham’s palms and forehead. Were they each crouching in the dark waiting the other’s move? The next scuttle of a mouse shattered his flesh and bones like a blow. He was goose-flesh from head to foot, including his scalp which pained him with its effort to lift his hair.’”

“You see he thought his goose was cooked,” was Julian’s next aside to Joel. Something was at last beginning to take place in Julian. Belknap saw a little sleepy devil waking in him that might not always prove easy to deal with.

“‘The man on the bed moved; lay still; shifted again. There was nothing for it but to strike. He sprang and struck: and drove the little knife up to his hand in something soft. He was saying tonight that a knife murder is not so good for the murderer whatever it may be to the murdered. He says the physical sensations will last him for life: the scraping of the blade on a bone, its spongy sinking home in a vital part, the sudden sagging of the body under one’s own tensity, and the last gasping gurgling breath against the face. Markham had never seen this man’s face, never would see it; but he would remember the feeling of the unshaven chin and the small, fat body; and the smell of sweated clothes mingling with the warm smell of fresh blood——’”

“If you don’t mind, Whittaker,” Crawford said in an inhuman voice, “I should like a glass of water. May I ring?” He tried to rise, staggered, and said, “Help me, Sydney.”

It seemed that Sydney had not heard him or was unable to move. She didn’t stir, or move her eyes. But Romany, from a huddled, shivering figure on the divan, came to life and ran to him.

“Durian, Neil, my beloved, my only love. What is he doing to you? I can’t bear it. I won’t let him do things like this—I don’t care—”

Romany didn’t finish—Sydney had heard, and had struck Romany a blow that threw her against the table. Nadia was laughing terribly as Blake came across toward Whittaker with murder on his face.

“Now by all that’s holy or unholy, you have overstepped the bounds, Bertrand Whittaker—”

Whether he ever reached Whittaker remained in doubt for at that moment the room was plunged in total darkness. Someone screamed—a woman. There was a scuffle and a thud. A man groaned. Belknap cried out: “Stay where you are as you value your lives.” They heard him feeling the wall for the switch, and then there was light.