have had an inquest on a constable as well as a lawyer. Good
night, gentlemen, if you are off."

We went out and left him with his prisoner--passive enough, indeed,
according to his ambiguously worded promise. As we passed through the
gateway Thorndyke gave the inspector's message, curtly and without
comment, to the gaping porter, and then we issued forth into Chancery
Lane.

We were all silent and very grave, and I thought that Thorndyke seemed
somewhat moved. Perhaps Mr. Jellicoe's last intent look--which I suspect
he knew to be the look of a dying man--lingered in his memory as it did
in mine. Half-way down Chancery Lane he spoke for the first time; and
then it was only to ejaculate, "Poor devil!"

Jervis took him up. "He was a consummate villain, Thorndyke."

"Hardly that," was the reply. "I should rather say that he was
non-moral. He acted without malice and without scruple or remorse. His
conduct exhibited a passionless expediency which was rather dreadful
because utterly unhuman. But he was a strong man--a courageous,
self-contained man, and I had been better pleased if it could have been
ordained that some other hand than mine should let the axe fall."

Thorndyke's compunction may appear strange and inconsistent, but yet his
feeling was also my own. Great as were the misery and suffering that
this inscrutable man had brought into the lives of those I loved, I
forgave him; and in his downfall forgot the callous relentlessness with
which he had pursued his evil purpose. For he it was who had brought
Ruth into my life; who had opened for me the Paradise of Love into which
I had just entered. And so my thoughts turned away from the still shape
that lay on the floor of the stately old room in Lincoln's Inn, away to
the sunny vista of the future, where I should walk hand in hand with
Ruth until my time, too, should come; until I, too, like the grim
lawyer, should hear the solemn evening bell bidding me put out into the
darkness of the silent sea.

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VANISHING MAN***

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