e down with
Nedda. F. F.," and laying it on the telegram, in case Derek should come
in by the side entrance, Felix and Nedda rejoined John in the hall.

To wait in anxiety is perhaps the hardest thing in life; tea, tobacco,
and hot baths perhaps the only anodynes. These, except the baths, they
took. Without knowing what had happened, neither John nor Felix liked to
make inquiry at the police station, nor did they care to try and glean
knowledge from the hotel people by questions that might lead to gossip.
They could but kick their heels till it became reasonably certain that
Derek was not coming back. The enforced waiting increased Felix's
exasperation. Everything Derek did seemed designed to cause Nedda pain.
To watch her sitting there, trying resolutely to mask her anxiety, became
intolerable. At last he got up and said to John:

"I think we'd better go round there," and, John nodding, he added: "Wait
here, my child. One of us'll come back at once and tell you anything we
hear."

She gave them a grateful look and the two brothers went out. They had
not gone twenty yards when they met Derek striding along, pale, wild,
unhappy-looking. When Felix touched him on the arm, he started and
stared blankly at his uncle.

"We've seen about Tryst," Felix said: "You've not done anything?"

Derek shook his head.

"Good! John, tell Nedda that, and stay with her a bit. I want to talk
to Derek. We'll go in the other way." He put his hand under the boy's
arm and turned him down into the side street. When they reached the
gloomy little bedroom Felix pointed to the telegram.

"From me. I suppose the news of his death stopped you?"

"Yes." Derek opened the telegram, dropped it, and sat down beside his
valise on the shiny sofa. He looked positively haggard.

Taking his stand against the chest of drawers, Felix said quietly:

"I'm going to have it out with you, Derek. Do you understand what all
this means to Nedda? Do you realize how utterly unhappy you're making
her? I don't suppose you're happy yourself--"

The boy's whole figure writhed.

"Happy! When you've killed some one you don't think much of
happiness--your own or any one's!"

Startled in his turn, Felix said sharply:

"Don't talk like that. It's monomania."

Derek laughed. "Bob Tryst's dead--through me! I can't get out of that."

Gazing at the boy's tortured face, Felix grasped the gruesome fact that
this idea amounted to obsession.

"D