to the ground.  Arthur was breathing more quickly now.  He thought that if he could keep on for one instant longer, he would be safe.  He threw all his weight on the form that rolled beneath him, and bore down furiously on the man’s arm.  He twisted it sharply, with all his might, and felt it give way.  He gave a low cry of triumph; the arm was broken.  And now his enemy was seized with panic; he struggled madly, he wanted only to get away from those long hands that were killing him.  They seemed to be of iron.  Arthur seized the huge bullock throat and dug his fingers into it, and they sunk into the heavy rolls of fat; and he flung the whole weight of his body into them.  He exulted, for he knew that his enemy was in his power at last; he was strangling him, strangling the life out of him.  He wanted light so that he might see the horror of that vast face, and the deadly fear, and the staring eyes.  And still he pressed with those iron hands.  And now the movements were strangely convulsive.  His victim writhed in the agony of death.  His struggles were desperate, but the avenging hands held him as in a vice.  And then the movements grew spasmodic, and then they grew weaker.  Still the hands pressed upon the gigantic throat, and Arthur forgot everything.  He was mad with rage and fury and hate and sorrow.  He thought of Margaret’s anguish and of her fiendish torture, and he wished the man had ten lives so that he might take them one by one.  And at last all was still, and that vast mass of flesh was motionless, and he knew that his enemy was dead.  He loosened his grasp and slipped one hand over the heart.  It would never beat again.  The man was stone dead.  Arthur got up and straightened himself.  The darkness was intense still, and he could see nothing.  Susie heard him, and at length she was able to speak.

‘Arthur what have you done?’

‘I’ve killed him,’ he said hoarsely.

‘O God, what shall we do?’

Arthur began to laugh aloud, hysterically, and in the darkness his hilarity was terrifying.

‘For God’s sake let us have some light.’

‘I’ve found the matches,’ said Dr Porhoet.

He seemed to awake suddenly from his long stupor.  He struck one, and it would not light.  He struck another, and Susie took off the globe and the chimney as he kindled the wick.  Then he held up the lamp, and they saw Arthur looking at them.  His face was ghastly.  The sweat ran off his forehead in great beads, and his eyes were bloodshot.  He trembled in every limb.  Then Dr Porhoet advanced with the lamp and held it forward.  They looked down on the floor for the man who lay there dead.  Susie gave a sudden cry of horror.

There was no one there.

Arthur stepped back in terrified surprise.  There was no one in the room, living or dead, but the three friends.  The ground sank under Susie’s feet, she felt horribly ill, and she fainted.  When she awoke, seeming difficultly to emerge from an eternal night, Arthur was holding down her head.