Chapter 2
MRS. ROBERTS: ‘Oh, he _saw_ how unstrung poor Edward was! Mr. Bemis, I think you’re quite prejudiced. How could Edward help their escaping? I think it was quite enough for him, single-handed, to get his watch back.’ A ring at the door, and then a number of voices in the anteroom. ‘I do believe they’re all there! I’ll just run out and prepare your son. He would be dreadfully shocked if he came right in upon you.’ She runs into the anteroom, and is heard without: ‘Oh, Dr. Lawton! Oh, Lou dear! _Oh_, Mr. Bemis! How can I ever tell you? Your poor father! No, no, I _can’t_ tell you! You mustn’t ask me! It’s too hideous! And you wouldn’t believe me if I did.’
_Chorus of anguished voices_: ‘What? what? what?’
MRS. ROBERTS: ‘They’ve been robbed! Garotted on the Common! And, _oh_, Dr. Lawton, I’m so glad _you’ve_ come! They’re both injured internally, but I _wish_ you’d look at Edward first.’
BEMIS: ‘Good heavens! Is that Mrs. Roberts’s idea of preparing my son? And his poor young wife!’ He addresses his demand to Mrs. Crashaw, who lifts the hands of impotent despair.
PART SECOND
MR. ROBERTS; MR. CAMPBELL
IN Mr. Roberts’s dressing-room, that gentleman is discovered tragically confronting Mr. Willis Campbell, with a watch uplifted in either hand.
WILLIS: ‘Well?’
ROBERTS, gasping: ‘My—my watch!’
WILLIS: ‘Yes. How comes there to be two of it?’
ROBERTS: ‘Don’t you understand? When I went out I—didn’t take my watch—with me. I left it here on my bureau.’
WILLIS: ‘Well?’
ROBERTS: ‘Oh, merciful heavens! don’t you see? Then I couldn’t have been robbed!’
WILLIS: ‘Well, but whose watch did you take from the fellow that didn’t rob you, then?’
ROBERTS: ‘His own!’ He abandons himself powerlessly upon a chair. ‘Yes; I left my own watch here, and when that person brushed against me in the Common, I missed it for the first time. I supposed he had robbed me, and ran after him, and—’
WILLIS: ‘Robbed _him_!’
ROBERTS: ‘Yes.’
WILLIS: ‘Ah, ha, ha, ha! I, hi, hi, hi! O, ho, ho, ho!’ He yields to a series of these gusts and paroxysms, bowing up and down, and stamping to and fro, and finally sits down exhausted, and wipes the tears from his cheeks. ‘Really, this thing will kill me. What are you going to do about it, Roberts?’
ROBERTS, with profound dejection and abysmal solemnity: ‘I don’t know, Willis. Don’t you see that it must have been—that I must have robbed—Mr. Bemis?’
WILLIS: ‘Bemis!’ After a moment for tasting the fact. ‘Why, so it was! Oh, Lord! oh, Lord! And was poor old Bemis that burly ruffian? that bloodthirsty gang of giants? that—that—oh, Lord! oh, Lord!’ He bows his head upon his chair-back in complete exhaustion, demanding, feebly, as he gets breath for the successive questions, ‘What are you going to d-o-o-o? What shall you s-a-a-a-y? How can you expla-a-ain it?’
ROBERTS: ‘I can do nothing. I can say nothing. I can never explain it. I must go to Mr. Bemis and make a clean breast of it; but think of the absurdity—the ridicule!’
WILLIS, after a thoughtful silence: ‘Oh, it isn’t _that_ you’ve got to think of. You’ve got to think of the old gentleman’s sense of injury and outrage. Didn’t you hear what he said—that he would have handed over his dearest friend, his own brother, to the police?’
ROBERTS: ‘But that was in the supposition that his dearest friend, his own brother, had intentionally robbed him. You can’t imagine, Willis—’
WILLIS: ‘Oh, I can imagine a great many things. It’s all well enough for you to say that the robbery was a mistake; but it was a genuine case of garotting as far as the assault and taking the watch go. He’s a very pudgicky old gentleman.’
ROBERTS: ‘He is.’
WILLIS: ‘And I don’t see how you’re going to satisfy him that it was all a joke. Joke? It _wasn’t_ a joke! It was a real assault and a _bona fide_ robbery, and Bemis can prove it.’
ROBERTS: ‘But he would never insist—’
WILLIS: ‘Oh, I don’t know about that. He’s pretty queer, Bemis is. You can’t say what an old gentleman like that will or won’t do. If he should choose to carry it into court—’
ROBERTS: ‘Court!’
WILLIS: ‘It might be embarrassing. And anyway, it would have a very strange look in the papers.’
ROBERTS: ‘The papers! Good gracious!’
WILLIS: ‘Ten years from now a man that heard you mentioned would forget all about the acquittal, and say: “Roberts? Oh yes! Wasn’t he the one they sent to the House of Correction for garotting an old friend of his on the Common!” You see, it wouldn’t do to go and make a clean breast of it to Bemis.’
ROBERTS: ‘I see.’
WILLIS: ‘What will you do?’
ROBERTS: ‘I must never say anything to him about it. Just let it go.’
WILLIS: ‘And keep his watch? I don’t see how you could manage that. What would you do with the watch? You might sell it, of course—’
ROBERTS: ‘Oh no, I _couldn’t_ do that.’
WILLIS: ‘You might give it away to some deserving person; but if it got him into trouble—’
ROBERTS: ‘No, no; that wouldn’t do, either.’
WILLIS: ‘And you can’t have it lying around; Agnes would be sure to find it, sooner or later.’
ROBERTS: ‘Yes.’
WILLIS: ‘Besides, there’s your conscience. Your conscience wouldn’t _let_ you keep Bemis’s watch away from him. And if it would, what do you suppose Agnes’s conscience would do when she came to find it out? Agnes hasn’t got much of a head—the want of it seems to grow upon her; but she’s got a conscience as big as the side of a house.’
ROBERTS: ‘Oh, I see; I see.’
WILLIS, coming up and standing over him, with his hands in his pockets: ‘I tell you what, Roberts, you’re in a box.’
ROBERTS, abjectly: ‘I know it, Willis; I know it. What do you suggest? You _must_ know some way out of it.’
WILLIS: ‘It isn’t a simple matter like telling them to start the elevator down when they couldn’t start her up. I’ve got to think it over.’ He walks to and fro, Roberts’s eyes helplessly following his movements. ‘How would it do to—No, that wouldn’t do, either.’
ROBERTS: ‘What wouldn’t?’
WILLIS: ‘Nothing. I was just thinking—I say, you might—Or, no, you couldn’t.’
ROBERTS: ‘Couldn’t what?’
WILLIS: ‘Nothing. But if you were to—No; up a stump that way too.’
ROBERTS: ‘Which way? For mercy’s sake, my dear fellow, don’t seem to get a clew if you haven’t it. It’s more than I can bear.’ He rises, and desperately confronts Willis in his promenade. ‘If you see any hope at all—’
WILLIS, stopping: ‘Why, if you were a different sort of fellow, Roberts, the thing would be perfectly easy.’
ROBERTS: ‘Very well, then. What sort of fellow do you want me to be? I’ll be any sort of fellow you like.’
WILLIS: ‘Oh, but you couldn’t! With that face of yours, and that confounded conscience of yours behind it, you would give away the whitest lie that was ever told.’
ROBERTS: ‘Do you wish me to lie? Very well, then, I will lie. What is the lie?’
WILLIS: ‘Ah, now you’re talking like a man! I can soon think up a lie if you’re game for it. Suppose it wasn’t so very white—say a delicate blonde!’
ROBERTS: ‘I shouldn’t care if it were as black as the ace of spades.’
WILLIS: ‘Roberts, I honour you! It isn’t everybody who could steal an old gentleman’s watch, and then be so ready to lie out of it. Well, you _have_ got courage—both kinds—moral and physical.’
ROBERTS: ‘Thank you, Willis. Of course I don’t pretend that I should be willing to lie under ordinary circumstances; but for the sake of Agnes and the children—I don’t want any awkwardness about the matter; it would be the death of me. Well, what do you wish me to say? Be quick; I don’t believe I could hold out for a great while. I don’t suppose but what Mr. Bemis would be reasonable, even if I—’
WILLIS: ‘I’m afraid we couldn’t trust him. The only way is for you to take the bull by the horns.’
ROBERTS: ‘Yes?’
WILLIS: ‘You will not only have to lie, Roberts, but you will have to wear an air of innocent candour at the same time.’
ROBERTS: ‘I—I’m afraid I couldn’t manage that. What is your idea?’
WILLIS: ‘Oh, just come into the room with a laugh when we go back, and say, in an offhand way, “By the way, Agnes, Willis and I made a remarkable discovery in my dressing-room; we found my watch there on the bureau. Ha, ha, ha!” Do you think you could do it?’
ROBERTS: ‘I—I don’t know.’
WILLIS: ‘Try the laugh now.’
ROBERTS: ‘I’d rather not—now.’
WILLIS: ‘Well, try it, anyway.’
ROBERTS: ‘Ha, ha, ha!’
WILLIS: ‘Once more.’
ROBERTS: ‘Ha, ha, ha!’
WILLIS: ‘Pretty ghastly; but I guess you can come it.’
ROBERTS: ‘I’ll try. And then what?’
WILLIS: ‘And then you say, “I hadn’t put it on when I went out, and when I got after that fellow and took it back, I was simply getting somebody else’s watch!” Then you hold out both watches to her, and laugh again. Everybody laughs, and crowds round you to examine the watches, and you make fun and crack jokes at your own expense all the time, and pretty soon old Bemis says, “Why, this is _my_ watch, _now_!” and you laugh more than ever—’
ROBERTS: ‘I’m afraid I couldn’t laugh when he said that. I don’t believe I could laugh. It would make my blood run cold.’
WILLIS: ‘Oh no, it wouldn’t. You’d be in the spirit of it by that time.’
ROBERTS: ‘Do you think so? Well?’
WILLIS: ‘And then you say, “Well, this is the most remarkable coincidence I ever heard of. I didn’t get my own watch from the fellow, but I got yours, Mr. Bemis;” and then you hand it over to him and say, “Sorry I had to break the chain in getting it from him,” and then everybody laughs again, and—and that ends it.’
ROBERTS, with a profound sigh: ‘Do you think that would end it?’
WILLIS: ‘Why, certainly. It’ll put old Bemis in the wrong, don’t you see? It’ll show that instead of letting the fellow escape to go and rob _him_, you attacked him and took Bemis’s property back from him yourself. Bemis wouldn’t have a word to say. All you’ve got to do is to keep up a light, confident manner.’
ROBERTS: ‘But what if it shouldn’t put Bemis in the wrong? What if he shouldn’t say or do anything that we’ve counted upon, but something altogether different?’
WILLIS: ‘Well, then, you must trust to inspiration, and adapt yourself to circumstances.’
ROBERTS: ‘Wouldn’t it be rather more of a joke to come out with the facts at once?’
WILLIS: ‘On you it would; and a year from now—say next Christmas—you could get the laugh on Bemis that way. But if you were to risk it now, there’s no telling how he’d take it. He’s so indignant he might insist upon leaving the house. But with this plan of mine—’
ROBERTS, in despair: ‘I couldn’t, Willis. I don’t feel light, and I don’t feel confident, and I couldn’t act it. If it were a simple lie—’
WILLIS: ‘Oh, lies are never simple; they require the exercise of all your ingenuity. If you want something simple, you must stick to the truth, and throw yourself on Bemis’s mercy.’
ROBERTS, walking up and down in great distress: ‘I can’t do it; I can’t do it. It’s very kind of you to think it all out for me, but’—struck by a sudden idea—‘Willis, why shouldn’t _you_ do it?’
WILLIS: ‘I?’
ROBERTS: ‘You are good at those things. You have so much _aplomb_, you know. _You_ could carry it off, you know, first-rate.’
WILLIS, as if finding a certain fascination in the idea: ‘Well, I don’t know—’
ROBERTS: ‘And I could chime in on the laugh. I think I could do that if somebody else was doing the rest.’
WILLIS, after a moment of silent reflection: ‘I _should_ like to do it. I should like to see how old Bemis would look when I played it on him. Roberts, I _will_ do it. Not a word! I should _like_ to do it. Now you go on and hurry up your toilet, old fellow; you needn’t mind me here. I’ll be rehearsing.’
MRS. ROBERTS, knocking at the door, outside: ‘Edward, are you _never_ coming?’
ROBERTS: ‘Yes, yes; I’ll be there in a minute, my dear.’
WILLIS: ‘Yes, he’ll be there. Run along back, and keep it going till we come. Roberts, I wouldn’t take a thousand dollars for this chance.’
ROBERTS: ‘I’m glad you like it.’
WILLIS: ‘Like it? Of course I do. Or no! Hold on! Wait! It won’t do! No; you must take the leading part, and I’ll support you, and I’ll come in strong if you break down. That’s the way we have got to work it. You must make the start.’
ROBERTS: ‘Couldn’t you make it better, Willis? It’s your idea.’
WILLIS: ‘No; they’d be sure to suspect me, and they can’t suspect you of anything—you’re so innocent. The illusion will be complete.’
ROBERTS, very doubtfully: ‘Do you think so?’
WILLIS: ‘Yes. Hurry up. Let me unbutton that collar for you.’
PART THIRD
I MRS. ROBERTS, DR. LAWTON, MRS. CRASHAW, MR. BEMIS, YOUNG MR. AND MRS. BEMIS
MRS. ROBERTS, surrounded by her guests, and confronting from her sofa Mr. Bemis, who still remains sunken in his armchair, has apparently closed an exhaustive recital of the events which have ended in his presence there. She looks round with a mixed air of self-denial and self-satisfaction to read the admiration of her listeners in their sympathetic countenances.
DR. LAWTON, with an ironical sigh of profound impression: ‘Well, Mrs. Roberts, you are certainly the most lavishly hospitable of hostesses. Every one knows what delightful dinners you give; but these little dramatic episodes which you offer your guests, by way of appetizer, are certainly unique. Last year an elevator stuck in the shaft with half the company in it, and this year a highway robbery, its daring punishment and its reckless repetition—what the newspapers will call “A Triple Mystery” when it gets to them—and both victims among our commensals! Really, I don’t know what more we could ask of you, unless it were the foot-padded footpad himself as a commensal. If this sort of thing should become _de rigueur_ in society generally, I don’t know what’s to become of people who haven’t your invention.’
MRS. ROBERTS: ‘Oh, it’s all very well to make fun now, Dr. Lawton; but if you had been here when they first came in—’
YOUNG MRS. BEMIS: ‘Yes, indeed, I think so too, Mrs. Roberts. If Mr. Bemis—Alfred, I mean—and papa hadn’t been with me when you came out there to prepare us, I don’t know what I should have done. I should certainly have died, or gone through the floor.’ She looks fondly up into the face of her husband for approval, where he stands behind her chair, and furtively gives him her hand for pressure.’
YOUNG MR. BEMIS: ‘Somebody ought to write to the Curwens—Mrs. Curwen, that is—about it.’
MRS. BEMIS, taking away her hand: ‘Oh yes, papa, _do_ write!’
LAWTON: ‘I will, my dear. Even Mrs. Curwen, dazzling away in another sphere—hemisphere—and surrounded by cardinals and all the other celestial lights there at Rome, will be proud to exploit this new evidence of American enterprise. I can fancy the effect she will produce with it.’
MRS. ROBERTS: ‘And the Millers—what a shame they couldn’t come! How excited they would have been!—that is, Mrs. Miller. Is their baby very bad, Doctor?’
LAWTON: ‘Well, vaccination is always a very serious thing—with a first child. I should say, from the way Mrs. Miller feels about it, that Miller wouldn’t be able to be out for a week to come yet.’
MRS. ROBERTS: ‘Oh, how ridiculous you are, Doctor!’
BEMIS, rising feebly from his chair: ‘Well, now that it’s all explained, Mrs. Roberts, I think I’d better go home; and if you’ll kindly have them telephone for a carriage—’
MRS. ROBERTS: ‘_No_, indeed, Mr. Bemis! We shall not let you go. Why, the _idea_! You must stay and take dinner with us, just the same.’
BEMIS: ‘But in this state—’
MRS. ROBERTS: ‘Oh, never mind the _state_. You look perfectly well; and if you insist upon going, I shall know that you bear a grudge against Edward for not arresting him. Wait! We can put you in perfect order in just a second.’ She flies out of the room, and then comes swooping back with a needle and thread, a fresh white necktie, a handkerchief, and a hair-brush. ‘There! I can’t let you go to Edward’s dressing-room, because he’s there himself, and the children are in mine, and we’ve had to put the new maid in the guest-chamber—you _are_ rather cramped in flats, that’s true; that’s the worst of them—but if you don’t mind having your toilet made in public, like the King of France—’
BEMIS, entering into the spirit of it: ‘Not the least; but—’ He laughs, and drops back into his chair.
MRS. ROBERTS, distributing the brush to young Mr. Bemis, and the tie to his wife, and dropping upon her knees before Mr. Bemis: ‘Now, Mrs. Lou, you just whip off that crumpled tie and whip on the fresh one, and, _Mister_ Lou, you give his hair a touch, and I’ll have this torn button-hole mended before you can think.’ She seizes it and begins to sew vigorously upon it.
MRS. CRASHAW: ‘Agnes, you are the most ridiculously sensible woman in the country.’
LAWTON, standing before the group, with his arms folded and his feet well apart, in an attitude of easy admiration: ‘The Wounded Adonis, attended by the Loves and Graces. Familiar Pompeiian fresco.’
MRS. ROBERTS, looking around at him: ‘I don’t see a great many Loves.’
LAWTON: ‘She ignores us, Mrs. Crashaw. And after what you’ve just said!’
MRS. ROBERTS: ‘Then why don’t you do something?’
LAWTON: ‘The Loves _never_ do anything—in frescoes. They stand round and sympathise. Besides, we are waiting to administer an anæsthetic. But what I admire in this subject even more than the activity of the Graces is the serene dignity of the Adonis. I have seen my old friend in many trying positions, but I never realised till now all the simpering absurdity, the flattered silliness, the senile coquettishness, of which his benign countenance was capable.’
MRS. ROBERTS: ‘Don’t mind him a bit, Mr. Bemis; it’s nothing but—’
LAWTON: ‘Pure envy. I own it.’
BEMIS: ‘All right, Lawton. Wait till—’
MRS. ROBERTS, making a final stitch, snapping off the thread, and springing to her feet, all in one: ‘There, have you finished, Mr. and Mrs. Lou? Well, then, take this lace handkerchief, and draw it down from his neck and pin it in his waistcoat, and you have—’
LAWTON, as Mr. Bemis rises to his feet: ‘A Gentleman of the Old School. Bemis, you look like a miniature of yourself by Malbone. Rather flattered, but—recognisable.’
BEMIS, with perfectly recovered gaiety: ‘Go on, go on, Lawton. I can understand your envy. I can pity it.’
LAWTON: ‘Could you forgive Roberts for not capturing the garotter?’
BEMIS: ‘Yes, I could. I could give the garotter his liberty, and present him with an admission to the Provident Woodyard, where he could earn an honest living for his family.’
LAWTON, compassionately: ‘You _are_ pretty far gone, Bemis. Really, I think somebody ought to go for Roberts.’
MRS. ROBERTS, innocently: ‘Yes, indeed! Why, what in the world can be keeping him?’ A nursemaid enters and beckons Mrs. Roberts to the door with a glance. She runs to her; they whisper; and then Mrs. Roberts, over her shoulder: ‘That ridiculous great boy of mine says he can’t go to sleep unless I come and kiss him good-night.’
LAWTON: ‘Which ridiculous great boy, I wonder?—Roberts, or Campbell? But I didn’t know they had gone to bed!’
MRS. BEMIS: ‘You are too bad, papa! You know it’s little Neddy.’
MRS. ROBERTS, vanishing: ‘Oh, I don’t mind his nonsense, Lou. I’ll fetch them both back with me.’
LAWTON, after making a melodramatic search for concealed listeners at the doors: ‘Now, friends, I have a revelation to make in Mrs. Roberts’s absence. I have found out the garotter—the assassin.’
ALL THE OTHERS: ‘What!’
LAWTON: ‘He has been secured—’
MRS. CRASHAW, severely: ‘Well, I’m very glad of it.’
YOUNG BEMIS: ‘By the police?’
MRS. BEMIS, incredulously: ‘Papa!’
BEMIS: ‘But there were several of them. Have they all been arrested?’
LAWTON: ‘There was only one, and none of him has been arrested.’
MRS. CRASHAW: ‘Where is he, then?’
LAWTON: ‘In this house.’
MRS. CRASHAW: ‘Now, Dr. Lawton, you and I are old friends—I shouldn’t like to say _how_ old—but if you don’t instantly be serious, I—I’ll carry my rheumatism to somebody else.’
LAWTON: ‘My _dear_ Mrs. Crashaw, you know how much I prize that rheumatism of yours! I will be serious—I will be only too serious. The garotter is Mr. Roberts himself.’
ALL, horror-struck: ‘Oh!’
LAWTON: ‘He went out without his watch. He thought he was robbed, but he wasn’t. He ran after the supposed thief, our poor friend Bemis here, and took Bemis’s watch away, and brought it home for his own.’
YOUNG BEMIS: ‘Yes, but—’
MRS. BEMIS: ‘But, papa—’
BEMIS: ‘How do you know it? I can see how such a thing might happen, but—how do you know it _did_?’
LAWTON: ‘I divined it.’
MRS. CRASHAW: ‘Nonsense!’
LAWTON: ‘Very well, then, I read of just such a ease in the _Advertiser_ a year ago. It occurs annually—in the newspapers. And I’ll tell you what, Mrs. Crashaw—Roberts found out his mistake as soon as he went to his dressing-room; and that ingenious nephew of yours, who’s closeted with him there, has been trying to put him up to something—to some game.’
MRS. CRASHAW: ‘Willis has too much sense. He would know that Edward couldn’t carry out any sort of game.’
LAWTON: ‘Well, then, he’s getting Roberts to let _him_ carry out the game.’
MRS. CRASHAW: ‘Edward couldn’t do that either.’
LAWTON: ‘Very well, then, just wait till they come back. Will you leave me to deal with Campbell?’
MRS. CRASHAW: ‘What are you going to do?’
YOUNG BEMIS: ‘You mustn’t forget that he got us out of the elevator, sir.’
MRS. BEMIS: ‘We might have been there yet if it hadn’t been for him, papa.’
MRS. CRASHAW: ‘I shouldn’t want Willis mortified.’
BEMIS: ‘Nor Mr. Roberts annoyed. We’re fellow-sufferers in this business.’
LAWTON: ‘Oh, leave it to me, leave it to me! I’ll spare their feelings. Don’t be afraid. Ah, there they come! Now don’t say anything. I’ll just step into the anteroom here.’
II MR. ROBERTS, MR. CAMPBELL, AND THE OTHERS
ROBERTS, entering the room before Campbell, and shaking hands with his guests: ‘Ah, Mr. Bemis; Mrs. Bemis; Aunt Mary! You’ve heard of our comical little coincidence—our—Mr. Bemis and my—’ He halts, confused, and looks around for the moral support of Willis, who follows hilariously.
WILLIS: ‘Greatest joke on record! But I won’t spoil it for you, Roberts. Go on!’ In a low voice to Roberts: ‘And don’t look so confoundedly down in the mouth. They won’t think it’s a joke at all.’
ROBERTS, with galvanic lightness: ‘Yes, yes—such a joke! Well, you see—you see—’
MRS. CRASHAW: ‘See _what_, Edward? _Do_ get it out!’
WILLIS, jollily: ‘Ah, ha, ha!’
ROBERTS, lugubriously: ‘Ah, ha, ha!’
MRS. BEMIS: ‘How funny! Ha, ha, ha!’
YOUNG MR. BEMIS: ‘Capital! capital!’
BEMIS: ‘Excellent!’
WILLIS: ‘Go on, Roberts, do! or I shall die! Ah, ha, ha!’
ROBERTS, in a low voice of consternation to Willis: ‘Where was I? I can’t go on unless I know where I was.’
WILLIS, _sotto voce_ to Roberts: ‘You weren’t anywhere! For Heaven’s sake, make a start!’
ROBERTS, to the others, convulsively: ‘Ha, ha, ha! I supposed all the time, you know, that I had been robbed, and—and—’
WILLIS: ‘Go on! _go_ on!’
ROBERTS, whispering: ‘I can’t do it—’
WILLIS, whispering: ‘You’ve _got_ to! You’re the beaver that clomb the tree. Laugh naturally, now!’
ROBERTS, with a staccato groan, which he tries to make pass for a laugh: ‘And then I ran after the man—’ He stops, and regards Mr. Bemis with a ghastly stare.
MRS. CRASHAW: ‘What is the matter with you, Edward? Are you sick?’
WILLIS: ‘Sick? No! Can’t you see that he can’t get over the joke of the thing? It’s killing him.’ To Roberts: ‘Brace up, old man! You’re doing it splendidly.’
ROBERTS, hopelessly: ‘And then the other man—the man that had robbed me—the man that I had pursued—ugh!’
WILLIS: ‘Well, it is too much for him. I shall have to tell it myself, I see.’
ROBERTS, making a wild effort to command himself: ‘And so—so—this man—man—ma—’