‘Hugo,’ Ravengar began persuasively, ’you must be aware that all these suspicions of yours are a figment of your excited brain.  You must be aware that I never meant to murder you.’

‘My dear fellow,’ Hugo replied with calm bitterness, ’I don’t intend to murder you.  I intend merely to put you in that vault.  Your death will be an accidental consequence, as mine would have been.  And why should you not die?  Can you give me a single good reason why you should continue to live?  What good are you doing on the earth?  Are you making anyone happy?  Are you making yourself happy?  That spark of vitality which constitutes your soul has chanced on an unfortunate incarnation.  Suppose that I release it, and give it a fresh opportunity, shall I not be acting worthily?  For you must agree that murder in the strict sense is an impossible thing.  The immortal cannot die.  Vital energy cannot be destroyed.  All that the murderer does is to end one incarnation and begin another.’

‘So that is your theory!’

‘Was it not yours, when you got me deposited in the vault?’ Hugo demanded with ferocious irony.  ’I am bound to believe that it was.  The common outcry against murder (as it is called) can have no weight with enlightened persons like you and me, Ravengar.’

‘Perhaps not,’ said Ravengar, summoning his powers of self-control.  ’But the common outcry against murder is apt to be very inconvenient for the person who chooses, as you put it, to end one incarnation and begin another.  Has it not struck you, Owen, that inquiries would be made for me, that my death would be certain to be discovered, and that ultimately you would suffer the penalty?’

’My arrangements for the future are far more complete than yours could have been in regard to me,’ Hugo answered smoothly.  ’You betrayed some clumsiness.  I shall profit by your mistakes.  No one will see you go into the Safe Deposit except myself and a man whom I can trust.  No one at all except myself will see you go into the vault.  I can manage the operation alone.  A little chloroform will quieten you for a time.  The vault once closed will not be opened during my lifetime, unless at four o’clock to-morrow night I hear you knocking on the door.  Of course, inquiries will be made, but they will be futile.  People often simply disappear.  You will simply disappear.’

The clock struck six.

‘And your conscience?’ Ravengar muttered.

’It’s soon well under control.  Besides, I shall be doing the human race, and especially the investing part of the human race, a very good turn.’

Then Ravengar approached Hugo, and, Hugo rising to meet him, their faces almost touched in the middle of the great room.

‘You called me a cur,’ he said.  ’Yet perhaps I am not such a cur after all.  You have beaten me.  You mean to finish me; I can see it in your face.  Well, you will regret it more than I shall.  Do you know I have often wished to die?  You are right in saying that there is no reason why I should live.  I am only a curse to the world.  But you are wrong to scorn me when you kill me.  You ought to pity me.  Did I choose my temperament, my individuality?  As I am, so I was born, and from his character no man can escape.’