For a moment he eyed the knife, then the assassin.
“I must say that you handled the coroner very adroitly! That relief-fund story which you advanced was, I take it, entirely imaginary. Even so, unless you bribed Folsom also—”
“I bribed no one,” Rochester protested. “Why should I? I did not want an autopsy. Who would? When Nina fell, I thought she had fainted. I had no idea she was dead. Do you suppose I had any intention of killing her? I hadn’t the slightest. All I wanted was to alarm her into leaving me and getting a divorce.”
“You certainly got one—with a bullet. That is very primitive, Phil!”
At that Rochester started. He stared at the novelist, who, knife in hand, looked rather primitive himself. Relentlessly the latter continued:
“It would call it Neozoic, only there were no firearms then.”
“But—” began Rochester, staring still, and broke off.
“But what?”
Impotently Rochester gestured.
“Why, nothing—nothing whatever; only I seem to have dropped a thread.”
“A thread!” Jones threw at him. “Is that the way you refer to your wife? It is true I never admired her, but then—”
“Look here!” Rochester protested. “You are all at sea. In telling you that I fired point-blank, I seem to have omitted to dot the i’s. It was a blank cartridge that I fired. In a brief summary such as I have given, one can’t think of every detail. Besides, I thought you already had it. It is no palliation, I admit, yet—”
Jones had been twisting the knife. Now the device on it prompted.
“You mean that she died of fright?”
“Certainly I do.”
V
In sheer relief, Jones sat back.
“But,” Rochester resumed, “none the less, I killed her.”
Aridly, across the novelist’s face there passed a smile.
“Though I am not imaginative enough to believe in fate, I am sufficiently commonplace to believe in an evil conscience. It was that that killed her.”
Rochester shook his head.
“No, it was I.”
Jones, knife in hand, turned on his friend.
“You are ridiculous, that’s what you are. The essence of crime is the intent, and in the absence of intention, though you were tried for it, as you might have been, you would be acquitted. But I appreciate now as I never did before the attitude of the physicians and the coroner. Knowing nothing of your pistol and less of her conscience, finding no evidence of violence, and having no reason to suspect anything else, they swallowed what you told them. It was adroit and, in view of the circumstances, excusable. On the other hand, if you had made a soiled breast of it, while you might have needed bail, not for a moment would you have been in jeopardy.”
“You’re a novelist!” retorted Rochester, who perhaps knew better—or worse.
Jones glanced at the knife.
“Now what are you to do? You tell me that you have been trying to get away from yourself and failed.”
Rochester, suffocating a sigh, took it up.
“Remorse prevented me.”
“Remorse?” Jones angrily repeated. “Rubbish! You failed because you thought of nothing but your precious self. To get away from it, you’ve got to think not of yourself, but of others. As for your remorse, it is medieval. Penitents used to expiate it in prayer. The most commendable form of prayer is a good deed. By the same token, the most important word in the dictionary is ‘duty.’ You have one to perform—don’t you realize it?”
Uncertainly Rochester nodded.
“I had thought of the front.”
“The front! What earthly use could you be in that red galley?”
“I had thought, too, of joining the Trappists.”
“The Trappists! When you can have the world for monastery!”
Uneasily, in the spaciousness of that, Rochester squirmed.
“No!” Jones cried at him. “You have another duty. Have you forgotten Priscilla?”
“Forgotten her! Did Dante in his inferno forget Beatrice?”
“Don’t run into excesses,” retorted Jones, to whom the bard was sacred. “There has been but one Dante, and, except in the heaven of the cantos, no Beatrice; but Priscilla exists, and on earth—and the plumber does not. Go to her! There is your duty.”
The vista allured, yet before the witchery of it Rochester lowered his eyes.
“To do that, I would have to tell her, and—but you don’t know her—never could she forgive!”
Angrily Jones again turned on him.
“No, I don’t know her, but I would not be worth my syndicate if I did not know women, and you can take it from me that in the heart of a woman who loves always there is forgiveness. Always, do you hear me?”
“Yes,” Rochester moodily answered. “I hear you, but I doubt it.”
“I dare say; but that is because you have yet to learn that all love is pity.”
“If I could think that!” Rochester, with lifted eyes, exclaimed. “If I could think—”
Jones, brandishing the knife, cut him short.
“Don’t think—act! Action is thought in motion. You have asked me what, in your circumstances, I would have a character in fiction do. Ordinarily it would cost you one fifty to discover. Here it is, free—I would have him stride, booted and spurred, into the palace of all delights, the palace of adventure, of love and ambition, and if ever, in the high halls there, a fantom surged, I would have him exorcise the apparition, not with vain regrets, but with the joy of giving. You are not a pauper, Phil. If you think you have done evil, then efface it with good. Meanwhile—”
The knife clattered on the table. Jones stood up.
“Meanwhile there is that hurdle-race. Your description of it might have been worse. In any event it is too good for you, and I will annex it for copy purposes. But the race remains. You now know the course better than before. Go it again. Dress yourself once more in the colors of hope. Put on anew its magic shirt and cap. Off with you! Take the hurdles as if there were nothing there, and at
