He was pointed out derisively in those expensive hotels where once every head had bowed obsequiously at his coming.  Then one night he went to his office, carrying a leather portfolio in his hand.  He still walked with his head up and met the eye of every man who cared to gaze into his own.  About his neck was turned up the collar of a sable-lined overcoat—­relic of his days of splendor.  As he walked down-town he met no one who knew him, and this suited his plans.  Lower Broadway after nightfall is as murky and silent as upper Broadway is aflare and noisy.  The steep buildings are like cemetery shafts, save where belated clerks work over their books and night watchmen guard their posts.

Burton’s offices, still his under a long-term lease, were denuded of furniture and accessories—­since the sheriff had already begun his confiscations here.

But tonight Hamilton Burton meant to use them for another, and a grimmer purpose—­in fact a final one.  The portfolio which he carried contained a dilapidated old blank book, such as one buys in a crossroads store, a volume of verse, and an automatic pistol, carefully loaded.  When the now inevitable moment came which should leave his family roofless—­he would not be there to see.

There is no saying what small matter may, at a given crisis, bring solace to a man who requires it.  Now Hamilton Burton appeared to find the necessary comfort in the boast which he nursed to his heart, that his exit from the world, with which he had played ducks and drakes, was to be entirely voluntary and in no wise forced:  that though he was closing life’s door upon himself he was still crossing the Stygian threshold the captain of his soul.

His face was calm enough as he turned on the light and drew down the blinds of his private office.  He had no knowledge of another tall figure, bearing abundant outward signs of adversity that, from the opposite side of the street, halted to glance up just as he showed himself there in the window.

Hamilton Burton deliberately unlocked the morocco brief-case with its gold clasp.  First he took out the pistol and carefully examined it, nodding his head in satisfaction.  Since there was no table left, he laid it on the window-sill near at hand.  Next he withdrew the book of verses and after that the country-store note-book with its dog-eared and age-yellowed pages.  These proceedings left the case empty save for a note directed, “Coroner’s Agent, City.”

In the days of his magnificence Hamilton Burton had regarded life-insurance as a poor man’s buffer between his heirs and want.

For himself it had meant nothing and he had passed it by.  Only since he had secretly half-admitted his vulnerability, had he thrown such an anchor to windward, and all his policies were new—­too new to hold validity against self-destruction.

And yet the brain that had been so cool always, so logical, had of late assumed a dozen unaccountable eccentricities.  Through his thoughts with the obstinacy of an obsession ran one refrain:  “’Twas no foe-man’s hand that slew him:  ’twas his own that struck the blow.”