"I didn’t care about hammering on the door. That would only have put Hassendean on the alert and left me still on the wrong side of the door. So I walked round to the lighted window and managed to get a glimpse of the room through the curtains. Yvonne was lying back in an armchair, facing me. I thought she’d fainted or something like that. The whole affair puzzled me a bit, you see. That young skunk Hassendean was wandering about the room, evidently in a devil of a state of nerves about something or other.
"Just as I was making up my mind to break the window, he bolted out of the room; and I thought he meant to clear off from the house, leaving Yvonne there—ill, perhaps. That made me pretty mad; and I kept my eye on the front door to see that he didn’t get away without my catching him. That prevented me from breaking the window and climbing into the room.
"Then, a bit to my surprise, the young swine came back again with something in his hand—I couldn’t see what it was then. He walked over to where Yvonne was, in the chair, lifted his arm, and shot her in the head. Deliberately. Nothing like an accident, remember. And there, before my eyes, I saw the whole of our dreams collapsing, just when we thought they were going to come true. Pretty stiff, wasn’t it?"
He bent forward and made a pretence of knocking the ashes from his pipe. When he looked up again, his face was set once more.
"I’m no psychologist to spin you a yarn about how I felt just then," he continued. "In fact, I doubt if I felt anything except that I wanted to down that young hound. Anyhow, I broke the glass, got my hand inside, undid the catch, and was through the curtain before he knew what was happening. I don’t know what he thought when he saw me. His face was almost worth it—sheer amazement and terror. He was just bringing up his pistol when I dropped on him and got his wrist. Then there was a bit of a struggle; but he hadn’t a chance against me. I shot him twice in the body and when he dropped, with blood coming from his mouth, I knew I’d got him in the lung, and I didn’t bother further about him. He seemed done for. I hoped he was."
Markfield’s voice in the last few sentences had expressed the bitterness of his emotions; but when he continued, he made a successful effort to keep his tone level.
"One thinks quick enough in a tight corner. First thing I did was to look at Yvonne."
He shrugged his shoulders to express what he seemed unable to put into words.
"That dream was done for. The only thing to do was to clear myself. I had another look at Hassendean. He seemed to have had his gruel. I’d a notion of shooting him again, just to make sure, but it didn’t seem worth while. Besides, there had been row enough already. A fourth shot might draw some passer-by. So I left him. I picked up the pistol and cleaned my fingermarks off it before putting it on the floor again. Then I did the same for the window-hasp. These were the only two things I’d touched, so I wasn’t leaving traces.
"Then I remembered something. Silverdale was always leaving his cigarette holder lying about the lab. He’d put it down on a bench or a desk and wander off, leaving the cigarette smouldering. That happened continually. That very afternoon, he’d left the thing in my room and I’d pocketed it, meaning to give it back to him when I saw him again. There it was, in my vest-pocket.
"In this world, it’s a case of every man for himself. My business was to get out of the hole I was in. If Silverdale got into a hole himself, it was his affair to get out of it. Besides, he’d probably have an alibi, whereas I hadn’t. In any case, the more tangled the business was, the better chance you fellows had of getting off my scent. If the whole story came out, I didn’t see how I was to persuade a jury it had been pure self-defence when I knew myself that it wasn’t that really. Besides, there were these infernal love-letters waiting at Yvonne’s house, all ready for the police and pointing straight to me as a factor in the affair. I’d have had awkward questions to answer about the contents of them.
"The net result was that I cleaned Silverdale’s cigarette-holder with my handkerchief to take off any finger-prints; and I dropped it on the floor to amuse you people. It had that fly in the amber—absolutely unique and easily identifiable.
"Then I switched off the lights, got out of the window again, closed it behind me in case it should attract a passer-by. I used my handkerchief to grip the hasp when I closed it, so as not to leave any fingerprints there. In fact, as I walked down to my car, I felt I’d done remarkably well on the spur of the moment.
