Page:Episodes-before-thirty.djvu/146

Rh before me, I lay back thinking, thinking, while an icy feeling spread slowly over me that for a long time made clear thought impossible. The word "dissipation" made me smile, but all I knew in those first moments was an aching, dull emotion, shot through from time to time by stabs of keenest pain. There was horror too, there was anger, pity ... as, one by one, recent events dropped the masks I had so deliberately pinned on them. These thin disguises that too sanguine self-deception had helped me to lay over a hideousness that hurt and frightened me, fell one by one. My anger passed; horror and pity remained. I cannot explain it quite; an intense sorrow, an equally intense desire to help and save, were in me. Affection, no doubt, was deep and real....

At the same time, the shock numbed something in me; the abrupt collapse of a friendship that meant so much to my loneliness bowled me over. What exactly had happened I did not know, I could not understand; treachery, falsity, double-dealing, lies--these were obvious, but the modus operandi was not clear. Why was the cheque torn up and so carelessly flung away? There was a mist of confusion over my mind. I thought over my police court experience, the criminal tricks and practices I already knew, but these threw no helpful light. Was Kay, too, involved? Did the warning of a few weeks ago include him as well? There had been forgery, yet again--why was the cheque torn up? The mystery of it all increased the growing sense of dread, of fear, of creeping horror. My newspaper work had given me the general feeling that everyone had his price ... but between friends in adversity, Englishmen, gentlemen as well ... was it then true literally of everybody?

After a time I collected the two documents and pieced them together again between the pages of a book, lest someone might enter and discover them. The doctor was not coming that day, but there might be other visitors. Then it suddenly dawned on me--why hadn't this occurred to me before?--that the whole thing must be a joke after all. Of course ... why not? It might even have Rh