I felt as though somebody was pouring funk out of a can down the back of my neck. My legs became feeble. I had got the first intimation of what the disaster meant for me. There was that confounded boy⁠—sky high! I was utterly “left.” There was the gold in the coffee-room⁠—my only possession on earth. How would it all work out? The general effect was of a gigantic unmanageable confusion.

“I say,” said the voice of the little man behind. “I say , you know.”

I wheeled about, and there were twenty or thirty people, a sort of irregular investment of people, all bombarding me with dumb interrogation, with infinite doubt and suspicion. I felt the compulsion of their eyes intolerably. I groaned aloud.

“I can’t !” I shouted. “I tell you I can’t! I’m not equal to it! You must puzzle and⁠—and be damned to you!”

I gesticulated convulsively. He receded a step as though I had threatened him. I made a bolt through them into the hotel. I charged back into the coffee-room, rang the bell furiously. I gripped the waiter as he entered. “D’ye hear?” I shouted. “Get help and carry these bars up to my room right away.”

He failed to understand me, and I shouted and raved at him. A scared-looking little old man in a green apron appeared, and further two of the young men in flannels. I made a dash at them and commandeered their services. As soon as the gold was in my room I felt free to quarrel. “Now get out,” I shouted; “all of you get out if you don’t want to see a man go mad before your eyes!” And I helped the waiter by the shoulder as he hesitated in the doorway. And then, as soon as I had the door locked on them all, I tore off the little man’s clothes again, shied them right and left, and got into bed forthwith. And there I lay swearing and panting and cooling for a very long time.