And if any one made him talk, what great harm would be done, after all?  It was not to be supposed that such a man as Isidore Bamberger had trusted only to his own keenness in collecting evidence, or to a few pencilled notes as a substitute for the principal witness himself, when an accident might happen at any moment to a man who led such a life.  The case for the prosecution had been quietly prepared during several months past, and the evidence that was to send Rufus Van Torp to execution, or to an asylum for the Criminal Insane for life, was in the safe of Isidore Bamberger’s lawyer in New York, unless, at that very moment, it was already in the hands of the Public Prosecutor.  A couple of cables would do the rest at any time, and in a few hours.  In murder cases, the extradition treaty works as smoothly as the telegraph itself.  The American authorities would apply to the English Home Secretary, the order would go to Scotland Yard, and Van Torp would be arrested immediately and taken home by the first steamer, to be tried in New York.

Six months earlier he might have pleaded insanity with a possible chance, but in the present state of feeling the plea would hardly be admitted.  A man who has been held up to public execration in the press for weeks, and whom no one attempts to defend, is in a bad case if a well-grounded accusation of murder is brought against him at such a moment; and Isidore Bamberger firmly believed in the truth of the charge and in the validity of the evidence.

He consoled himself with these considerations, and with the reflection that Feist was actually safer where he was, and less liable to accident than if he were at large.  Mr. Bamberger walked slowly down Harley Street to Cavendish Square, with his head low between his shoulders, his hat far back on his head, his eyes on the pavement, and the shiny toes of his patent leather boots turned well out.  His bowed legs were encased in loose black trousers, and had as many angles as the forepaws of a Dachshund or a Dandie Dinmont.  The peculiarities of his ungainly gait and figure were even more apparent than usual, and as he walked he swung his long arms, that ended in large black gloves which looked as if they were stuffed with sawdust.

Yet there was something in his face that set him far beyond and above ridicule, and the passers-by saw it and wondered gravely who and what this man in black might be, and what great misfortune and still greater passion had moulded the tragic mark upon his features; and none of those who looked at him glanced at his heavy, ill-made figure, or noticed his clumsy walk, or realised that he was most evidently a typical German Jew, who perhaps kept an antiquity shop in Wardour Street, and had put on his best coat to call on a rich collector in the West End.

Those who saw him only saw his face and went on, feeling that they had passed near something greater and sadder and stronger than anything in their own lives could ever be.