But even this bit of dust⁠— dust being something that at least had an authentic place in human history!⁠—failed to support him just then in what threatened to become a veritable dissolution of his being! The spiritual “aura” emanating from the Weevil mansion attacked him like a miasma of desolation, blending itself with Gerda’s anger, with what he had read in Christie’s exercise-book, and with the thought of having to face Mr. Urquhart. The strength seemed to ebb out of him. Slowly he rose to his feet; and turning his eyes from the marble slab, he stared now at a gilded table, with a fringed mat upon it, supporting a bronze tray containing a solitary black-edged calling-card.

He leaned upon his stick and contemplated that card in an hypnosis of misery. Life seemed entirely composed of weeping faces, old men sneaking up bedroom-stairs, tombstones with spittle trickling down, and black-edged calling-cards. He felt as if the First Cause of the Universe were a small, malignant grub, radiating a deadly blight in withering, centrifugal airwaves!