al chance of securing my safety. No
suspicion could fall on me if I went back--and found the body.

"And so it turned out. We reached Flint House just at the right moment,
for me. I broke into the room and found him--dead. He was not where I had
left him. In a last paroxysm he had struggled to his feet and fallen
across the clock-case, with the intention, as I shall always believe, of
putting back the hand of the clock. I think his dying vision saw me alter
it, and his last thought--his last effort--was to thwart my intention to
mislead those upon whom would devolve the duty of investigating his death.
But death was too quick to allow him to carry out his intention."

The cessation of the speaker's voice was followed by silence. Thalassa had
nothing to say--no need for words. Austin Turold could not trust himself
to speak. It was not that his cynical philosophy of life failed him at
that moment. The eternal staging of the drama was the eternal tragedy of
the performers. But he was thinking of his son. He had vision enough to
realize that in Sisily's death Charles had lost all. His own hardness of
outlook melted at that thought. It crumbled his worldliness to ashes,
flooded his heart with vain regret, found utterance at last in the
whispered words--

"How am I to tell my son?"

His eyes, dwelling on the door of the inner room, revealed the direction
of his thought.

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