enters. He stands a moment bewildered by the
half-light, then calls sharply: "Larry!" and turns up the light.
Seeing the forms on the couch, he recoils a moment. Then,
glancing at the table and empty decanters, goes up to the couch.
KEITH. [Muttering] Asleep! Drunk! Ugh!
[Suddenly he bends, touches LARRY, and springs back.]
What! [He bends again, shakes him and calls] Larry! Larry!
[Then, motionless, he stares down at his brother's open,
sightless eyes. Suddenly he wets his finger and holds it to the
girl's lips, then to LARRY'S.]
[He bends and listens at their hearts; catches sight of the
little box lying between them and takes it up.]
My God!
[Then, raising himself, he closes his brother's eyes, and as he
does so, catches sight of a paper pinned to the couch; detaches
it and reads:]
"I, Lawrence Darrant, about to die by my own hand confess that I----"
[He reads on silently, in horror; finishes, letting the paper
drop, and recoils from the couch on to a chair at the
dishevelled supper table. Aghast, he sits there. Suddenly he
mutters:]
If I leave that there--my name--my whole future!
[He springs up, takes up the paper again, and again reads.]
My God! It's ruin!
[He makes as if to tear it across, stops, and looks down at
those two; covers his eyes with his hand; drops the paper and
rushes to the door. But he stops there and comes back,
magnetised, as it were, by that paper. He takes it up once more
and thrusts it into his pocket.]
[The footsteps of a Policeman pass, slow and regular, outside.
His face crisps and quivers; he stands listening till they die
away. Then he snatches the paper from his pocket, and goes past
the foot of the couch to the fore.]
All my----No! Let him hang!
[He thrusts the paper into the fire, stamps it down with his
foot, watches it writhe and blacken. Then suddenly clutching
his head, he turns to the bodies on the couch. Panting and like
a man demented, he recoils past the head of the couch, and
rushing to the window, draws the curtains and throws the window
up for air. Out in the darkness rises the witch-like skeleton
tree, where a dark shape seems hanging. KEITH starts back.]
What's that? What----!
[He shuts the window and draws the dark curtains across it
ag
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