ly, Heyton
stretched out his hand, found the switch, and extinguished the light.

"Who is there?" came the Marquess's voice. "What is it? Who is there?"

The voice came nearer; the Marquess was now in the dressing-room. Heyton
knew that his father was standing still; that, in another instant, he
would be calling for assistance. But the Marquess did not speak; he made
a movement, and Heyton guessed that his father was returning to the
bedroom to turn up all the lights there.

With a smothered oath, the wretched man stole forward, felt for the
fireplace with his foot, caught up the poker and, feeling his way round
the wall, reached the bedroom door. As he did so, the Marquess reached
it also and actually touched his son. Heyton drew back a pace, swung up
the poker and struck at the figure he could not see; there was a cry, a
choked groan, the sound of a body falling to the floor; then a
death-like silence.

Shaking in every limb, the poker still grasped in his hand, Heyton leant
against the wall, his other hand clinging to it, as if for support. The
clock on the mantelpiece seemed to tick a thousand times as he crouched
there, staring, with protruding eyes, into the horrible darkness; then,
with a gasp, as if he were suffocating, he felt his way round to the
switch, and turned it on. The light fell on the figure of the Marquess,
lying on its back, where he had fallen; his arms were stretched out, he
was quite motionless, and a thin stream of blood was trickling from his
forehead; it had already reddened his face and made a small pool on the
carpet.

Heyton stood and gazed at this horrible sight, as if he were turned to
stone. He was like a man who has been suddenly struck by paralysis; it
seemed to him as if the whole of his legs and feet had been turned to
lead, and that he should never again be able to move them, that he would
be forced to remain there until the servants came and that--that
horrible thing lying at his feet were discovered.

For some minutes he remained in this condition of coma, stupor; but
presently, gradually, he recovered the use of his limbs, his brain began
to work again, and he asked himself whether there was any reason for the
terror which had obsessed him. Of compunction for the awful crime there
was nothing in his mind or heart. That the man he had struck down was
his own father, did not count; every fibre of his being was absorbed, to
the exclusion of everything else, in the desire for h