“He’s dead, Chris,” he said. “I couldn’t do anything.” This addition to his news sounded singularly foolish as soon as it was uttered. Even at that inadvertent moment, on the eighth step of those backstairs, he blushed to have spoken such a banality.

“It’s too late, doctor,” said she, turning her head towards the man behind her.

“I feared so,” said Doctor Percy.

“Poor old gentleman!” repeated Doctor Percy. “He is spared a great deal.” The tone in which this amiable epitaph echoed through that house and penetrated into the shop, with its shelves of perverse erudition, had an irritating effect upon Wolf’s nerves.

He felt a malicious desire, as he moved aside to let Christie pass, to catch the man by the sleeve of his neat coat and whisper in his ear something monstrous. “She had to throw him downstairs, you idiot; she had to throw him downstairs!”