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Rh certainly took at first for the detective. He stood stock still like a petrified figure. A moment later he recognized him as the Englishman he had met at the cricket match. He subsided backwards, half on to the window-sill and half against the dressing-table. The drama of the scene suddenly occurred to me for the first time, as I watched Grant walk over and put the razor in his pocket, and then sit down quietly on the sofa. He spoke no single word. He merely sat and watched.

With my back against the door I then went on talking quickly. Yet behind my anger and disgust, I felt the old pity surge up; already I was sorry for him; I would presently forgive him. But, first, there was something else to be done. The plan lay quite clear in my mind.

Closely watched by Grant and myself, Boyde had meanwhile moved out into the room, still without speaking a single word, and flung himself on the bed where he began to cry like a child. He sobbed convulsively, though whether the tears were of sorrow or of fear, I could not tell. We watched him for some time in silence. It was some minutes later that he sat up, still shaking with sobs, and tried to speak. In an utterly broken voice he begged for mercy, not for himself--he swore he didn't "care a damn" about his "worthless self"--but for his mother's sake. It would break her heart, if she heard about it; it would kill her. He implored me for another chance. His flow of words never ceased. If I would let him off this time, he begged, he would do anything I wished, anything, anything in the world. He would leave New York, he would go home and enlist ... but forgery meant years in gaol. "I am only thirty, and the sentence would mean the end of my life...."

Perhaps instinct warned me he was lying, perhaps he over-acted, I cannot say; but the entire scene, the sobs, the impassioned language, the anguish in the broken voice, the ruin of the face I had once thought innocent, all left me without emotion. I was exhausted too. I had witnessed similar scenes between detectives and their Rh