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Updated: May 10, 2025
In the narrow stone passage leading to his staircase, a friend had called out: "Bravo, Darrant! That was a squeak! Congratulations!" And with a bitter little smile Keith thought: 'Congratulations! At the first possible moment the hurried back to the Strand, and hailing a cab, he told the man to put him down at a turning near to Borrow Street. It was the girl who opened to his knock.
With a twinge of pity in the midst of all the turbulence of his revolt, and fear, and disgust Keith put his hand on his brother's shoulder, and said: "Courage!" And suddenly he thought: 'My God! Courage! I shall want it all myself! Laurence Darrant, leaving his brother's house in the Adelphi, walked northwards, rapidly, slowly, rapidly again.
Keith Darrant, the well-known King's Counsel" visiting a woman of the town, strangling with his bare hands the woman's husband! No intention to murder, but a dead man! A dead man carried out of the house, laid under a dark archway! Provocation! Recommended to mercy penal servitude for life! Was that the advice he was going to give Larry to-morrow morning?
Keith buried it beneath the clothes and noticed an envelope pinned to the coverlet; bending down, he read: "Please give this at once to the police. LAURENCE DARRANT." He thrust it into his pocket. Like elastic stretched beyond its uttermost, his reason, will, faculties of calculation and resolve snapped to within him. He thought with incredible swiftness: 'I must know nothing of this.
If he had not chanced to go there, the charwoman would have found them when she came in the morning, and given that envelope to the police! He took it out. He had a right a right to know what was in it! He broke it open. "I, Laurence Darrant, about to die by my own hand, declare that this is a solemn and true confession.
The fellow must have seen him coming out! Utterly unable to restrain a start, and muttering "Goodnight!" Keith walked on rapidly: He went full quarter of a mile before he lost that startled and uneasy feeling in sardonic exasperation that he, Keith Darrant, had been taken for a frequenter of a lady of the town. The whole thing the whole thing! a vile and disgusting business!
Men of facts and of decision switching imagination on and off at will, subordinating sentiment to reason... one does not think of them when watching wind ripple over cornfields, or swallows flying. Keith Darrant had need for being of that breed during his dinner at the Tellassons. It was just eleven when he issued from the big house in Portland Place and refrained from taking a cab.
Had that policeman really followed him home? Accessory after the fact! Keith Darrant, King's Counsel, man of mark! He forced himself by an effort, which had something of the heroic, to drop this panicky feeling. Panic never did good. He must face it, and see.
Darrant in?" to hear without sign of any kind the answer: "He's not up yet, sir." "Never mind; I'll go in and see him. Mr. Keith Darrant." On his way to Laurence's bedroom, in the midst of utter relief, he had the self-possession to think: 'This arrest is the best thing that could have happened. It'll keep their noses on a wrong scent till Larry's got away.
But that was what Keith Darrant liked, after his day's work the hard early morning study of his "cases," the fret and strain of the day in court; it was his rest, these two hours before dinner, with books, coffee, a pipe, and sometimes a nap. In red Turkish slippers and his old brown velvet coat, he was well suited to that framing of glow and darkness.
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