th anguish. He would have
done anything to save that old man from pain. But it was too late now. A
gas-jet that lighted a wide and open door attracted his attention; he
looked in, the building seemed empty as a lecture-hall. After all, he
decided, perhaps that would be best.

Half an hour later, Tristrem Varick was the occupant of a room that was
not as large as one of the closets in his grandfather's house. The
furniture consisted of a wooden bench. The sole fixture was an apparatus
for drawing water. The floor was tiled and the upper part of the walls
was white; the lower, red. The room itself was very clean. There was no
window, and the door, which was of grated iron, had been locked from
without. From an adjoining cell, a drunken harlot rent the night with
the strain of a maudlin ditty.

XVII.

It was some little time before the powers that are could be convinced
that Tristrem Varick was guilty of the self-accused murder. It was not
that murders are rare, but a murder such as that was tolerably uncommon.
The sergeant who presided over the police-station in which Tristrem had
delivered himself up was a mild-mannered man, gentle of voice, and
sceptical as a rag-picker. He received Tristrem's statement without
turning a hair.

"What did you do it for?" he asked, and when Tristrem declined to enter
into any explanation, he smiled with affable incredulity. "I can, if you
insist," he said, "accommodate you with a night's lodging." And he was
as good as his word; but the cell which Tristrem subsequently occupied
was not opened for him until the sergeant was convinced that death had
really visited the precinct.

Concerning the form in which that death had come, there was at first no
doubt. Weldon had been found stretched lifeless on a sofa. The physician
who was then summoned made a cursory examination, and declared that
death was due to disease of the heart. Had Tristrem held his tongue,
that verdict, in all probability, would never have been questioned;
indeed, it was not until the minuter autopsy which Tristrem's statement
instigated that the real cause was discovered.

It was then that it began to be admitted that violence had been used,
but as to whether that violence was accidental or intentional, and if
intentional, whether or not it was premeditated, was a matter which,
according to our archaic law, twelve men in a pen could alone decide.
The case was further complicated by a question of sanity. Grant