I had these two successes in mind as I drew the cheque-book towards me. At last the possibility of attaining leisure and security lay under my hand. It was dishonest, of course, but my whole life has been stamped with dishonesty. The work I do, my relations with Sophy, my deliberate blindness as to her probable relations with other men—this seemed no worse, and at least it had some purpose. Of course, it was dangerous. It was borne in on me, as I stood wondering how much I dare put myself down for, how dangerous. No one would believe that my father would willingly give me a halfpenny. I should have to contrive some story that would satisfy or at all events silence Richard and Amy and Eustace, who’d be on my heels like a pack of dogs after a fox. But since my present way of living was intolerable, and my life had been trapped in a cul-de-sac whence I saw no other possible escape, I determined to run the risk. I had suffered so much from the humiliations of poverty that anything seemed preferable.
I began, this decision once taken, to find excellent reasons for the forgery. It would, I argued, actually strengthen my hand to produce the cheque, for what earthly motive should I have for murder in that event? This was so subtle an argument that I promptly took a pen from the rack on the table and began to test my skill on a writing-pad lying near at hand. I found I retained the art as skilfully as ever. Any one of those specimens, I think, would have been passed by my father’s bank. So I took up the cheque and in a moment of fine, reckless frenzy filled in a sum of two thousand pounds. Colossal, of course, but I had to make provision for Sophy and the children, and I couldn’t go abroad without a penny in my pocket. In any case, the temptation was too great. I might easily be detected, and, if so, it would be humiliating to have lost freedom for a beggarly five hundred pounds. But when I had signed the cheque and torn it out and filled in the counterfoil, with my father’s customary meticulous detail, I stood there, rather at a loss, feeling I should do something to safeguard myself. For, considering the position, it now seemed obvious to me that the simplest intelligence would realise that I had been the last person to see my father alive. It was unlikely that anyone else would come down to-night. Yet, to save my own skin, I must make it appear that he had had a later visitor than myself. The solution was, of course, a simple one, though it was some time before I hit upon it. I tore out a blank cheque, that I destroyed, filled in the second counterfoil with Eustace’s name, and an amount of ten thousand pounds, and dated that the 25th December. The plan was simplicity itself; anyone turning over the leaves of the cheque-book would leap to the obvious conclusion that Eustace had visited the library after my departure. It being now Christmas Day, there would be no possibility of his arguing that he had received the cheque before the evening.
It seemed to me that I had laid the perfect trap; in addition, there was his handkerchief lying destroyed in the grate. It might, of course, be shown that some other member of the family used silk handkerchiefs, but the association of facts seemed to me invincible. As for the amount, I was aware that Eustace had mentioned a sum of ten thousand pounds as being requisite for the settlement of his affairs.
I chose him instinctively as my victim, because he suited my plan better than anyone else in the house. He needed the money desperately, for one thing. Again, it would be difficult to imagine Richard using violence against his father, whatever his provocation, whereas, I argued, Eustace might easily lose his head. (I think now that I was wrong, but at the time I really did believe in my own argument.) And when I came to consider the position, I realised that, if I had had time for a mature judgment, I should have come to a similar conclusion. Eustace was Olivia’s husband, and I owed her and him and their supercilious young sons a long reckoning. And beyond all these facts, I revelled in the notion of watching that crooked dealer squirm and writhe in an attempt to extricate himself, as his dupes must often have squirmed and wriggled, without an iota of sympathy from him.
My sole desire now was to leave the library before my presence here was discovered. By filling in the second counterfoil I had intensified my peril a hundred times. Moreover, panic was beginning to assail me. To my troubled ears, the house now seemed full of turmoil. I was continually jerking up my head to observe the door, that at every instant seemed about to open. It was all I could do to refrain from crossing the room and flinging it wide to reassure myself that no malevolent presence lurked in the shadows of the hall. Odd shapes, like mysterious birds, flashed across the ceiling. The thunder of the gale at the windows and the chimney were heavy with voices. There were steps on the stairs and faces at the pane. Nevertheless, I beat down the approaching storm of terror, and compelled my imagination to work for my release. Before I left the room, I must evolve some kind of story to account for the magnitude of
