The full realization of what he had done broke in upon him when he found himself turning to fly from the approach of the constable.  The wet cape glistening in the lamplight, the slow, heavy step, made him tremble.  Suppose the thing upstairs was not quite dead and should cry out?  Suppose the constable should think it strange for him to be standing there and follow him in?  He assumed a careless attitude, which did not feel careless, and as the man passed bade him good-night, and made a remark as to the weather.

Ere the sound of the other’s footsteps had gone quite out of hearing, he turned and entered the house again before the sense of companionship should have quite departed.  The first flight of stairs was lighted by the gas in the hall, and he went up slowly.  Then he struck a match and went up steadily, past the library door, and with firm fingers turned on the gas in his bedroom and lit it.  He opened the window a little way, and sitting down on his bed, tried to think.

He had got eight hours.  Eight hours and two hundred pounds in small notes.  He opened his safe and took out all the loose cash it contained, and walking about the room, gathered up and placed in his pockets such articles of jewellery as he possessed.

The first horror had now to some extent passed, and was succeeded by the fear of death.

With this fear on him he sat down again and tried to think out the first moves in that game of skill of which his life was the stake.  He had often read of people of hasty temper, evading the police for a time, and eventually falling into their hands for lack of the most elementary common sense.  He had heard it said that they always made some stupid blunder, left behind them some damning clue.  He took his revolver from a drawer and saw that it was loaded.  If the worst came to the worst, he would die quickly.

Eight hours’ start; two hundred odd pounds.  He would take lodgings at first in some populous district, and let the hair on his face grow.  When the hue-and-cry had ceased, he would go abroad and start life again.  He would go out of a night and post letters to himself, or better still, postcards, which his landlady would read.  Postcards from cheery friends, from a sister, from a brother.  During the day he would stay in and write, as became a man who described himself as a journalist.

Or suppose he went to the sea?  Who would look for him in flannels, bathing and boating with ordinary happy mortals?  He sat and pondered.  One might mean life, and the other death.  Which?

His face burned as he thought of the responsibility of the choice.  So many people went to the sea at that time of year that he would surely pass unnoticed.  But at the sea one might meet acquaintances.  He got up and nervously paced the room again.  It was not so simple, now that it meant so much, as he had thought.

The sharp little clock on the mantel-piece rang out “one,” followed immediately by the deeper note of that in the library.  He thought of the clock, it seemed the only live thing in that room, and shuddered.  He wondered whether the thing lying by the far side of the table heard it.  He wondered——­