ying at?" cried Jaffery, in his
great, hoarse bass.

"God knows," said I.

But even as I spoke, I knew.

I looked round the room which Barbara had once called the Condemned
Cell. The ghastly truth of her prescience shook me, and I began to
shudder with the horror of it, and with the hitherto unnoticed cold. I
was chilled to the bone. Jaffery put his arm round my shoulders and
hugged me kindly.

"Go and get warm," said he.

"But this?" I pointed to the litter.

"I'll see to it and join you in a minute."

He pushed me outside the door and I went into the drawing-room, where I
crouched before a blazing fire with chattering teeth and benumbed feet
and hands. I was alone. Doria had taken a faint turn for the better that
morning and Barbara had run down to Northlands for the day. It was just
as well she had gone, I thought. I should have a few hours to compose
some story in mitigation of the tragedy.

Soon Jaffery returned with a glass of brandy, which I drank. He sat down
on a low chair by the fire, his elbows on his knees and his shoulders
hunched up, and the leaping firelight played queer tricks with the
shadows on his bearded face, making him look old and seamed with coarse
and innumerable furrows. But for the blaze the room was filled with the
yellow darkness that was thickening outside; yet we did not think of
turning on the lights.

"What have you done?" I asked.

"Locked the stuff up again," he replied. "This afternoon I'll bring a
portmanteau and take it away."

"What are you going to do with it?"

"Leave that to me," said he.

What was in his mind I did not know, but, for the moment, I was very
glad to leave it to him. In a vague way I comforted myself with the
reflection that Jaffery was a specialist in crises. It was his job, as
he would have said. In the ordinary affairs of life he conducted himself
like an overgrown child. In time of cataclysm he was a professional
demigod. He reassured me further.

"That's where I come in. Don't worry about it any more."

"All right," said I.

And for a while he said nothing and stared at the fire. Presently he
broke the silence.

"What was the poor devil playing at?" he repeated. "What, in God's
name?"

And then I told him. It took a long time. I was still in the cold grip
of the horror of that condemned cell, and my account was none too
consecutive. There was also some argument and darting up side-tracks,
which broke the continuity. It was also diffi