me to
the archway to see where the body had lain, as having visited the girl
the very evening after the murder. Who would believe in the mere
coincidence of such visits on the part of the murderer's brother. But
apart from that suspicion, the fearful scandal which so sensational an
affair must make would mar his career, his life, his young daughter's
life! Larry's suicide with this girl would make sensation enough as it
was; but nothing to that other. Such a death had its romance; involved
him in no way save as a mourner, could perhaps even be hushed up! The
other--nothing could hush that up, nothing prevent its ringing to the
house-tops. He got up from his chair, and for many minutes roamed the
room unable to get his mind to bear on the issue. Images kept starting up
before him. The face of the man who handed him wig and gown each
morning, puffy and curious, with a leer on it he had never noticed
before; his young daughter's lifted eyebrows, mouth drooping, eyes
troubled; the tiny gilt crucifix glinting in the hollow of the dead
girl's arm; the sightless look in Larry's unclosed eyes; even his own
thumb and finger pulling the lids down. And then he saw a street and
endless people passing, turning to stare at him. And, stopping in his
tramp, he said aloud: "Let them go to hell! Seven days' wonder!" Was he
not trustee to that confession! Trustee! After all he had done nothing
to be ashamed of, even if he had kept knowledge dark. A brother! Who
could blame him? And he picked up those sheets of paper. But, like a
great murky hand, the scandal spread itself about him; its coarse
malignant voice seemed shouting: "Paiper!... Paiper!... Glove Lane
Murder!... Suicide and confession of brother of well-known K.C....
Well-known K.C.'s brother.... Murder and suicide.... Paiper!" Was he to
let loose that flood of foulness? Was he, who had done nothing, to smirch
his own little daughter's life; to smirch his dead brother, their dead
mother--himself, his own valuable, important future? And all for a sewer
rat! Let him hang, let the fellow hang if he must! And that was not
certain. Appeal! Petition! He might--he should be saved! To have got
thus far, and then, by his own action, topple himself down!

With a sudden darting movement he thrust the confession in among the
burning coals. And a smile licked at the folds in his dark face, like
those flames licking the sheets of paper, till they writhed and
blackened