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some extraordinary kind of justice was being done. In the past he had been wanton and imbecile and
irresponsible. Now Fate was playing as wantonly, as irresponsibly, with him. It was tit for tat, and God existed
after all.
He felt that he would like to pray. Forty years ago he used to kneel by his bed every evening. The nightly
formula of his childhood came to him almost unsought from some long unopened chamber of the memory.
"God bless Father and Mother, Tom and Cissie and the Baby, Mademoiselle and Nurse, and everyone that I
love, and make me a good boy. Amen." They were all dead now all except Cissie.
His mind seemed to soften and dissolve; a great calm descended upon his spirit. He went upstairs to ask
Doris's forgiveness. He found her lying on the couch at the foot of the bed. On the floor beside her stood a
blue bottle of liniment, marked "Not to be taken"; she seemed to have drunk about half of it.
"You didn't love me," was all she said when she opened her eyes to find him bending over her.
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Dr. Libbard arrived in time to prevent any very serious consequences. "You mustn't do this again," he said
while Mr. Hutton was out of the room.
"What's to prevent me?" she asked defiantly.
Dr. Libbard looked at her with his large, sad eyes. "There's nothing to prevent you," he said. "Only yourself
and your baby. Isn't it rather bad luck on your baby, not allowing it to come into the world because you want
to go out of it?"
Doris was silent for a time. "All right," she whispered. "I won't."
Mr. Hutton sat by her bedside for the rest of the night. He felt himself now to be indeed a murderer. For a time
he persuaded himself that he loved this pitiable child. Dozing in his chair, he woke up, stiff and cold, to find
himself drained dry, as it were, of every emotion. He had become nothing but a tired and suffering carcase. At
six o'clock he undressed and went to bed for a couple of hours of sleep. In the course of the same afternoon
the coroner's jury brought in a verdict of "Wilful Murder," and Mr. Hutton was committed for trial.
VI
MS. TISSSPENCE was not at all well. She had found her public appearances in the witness-box very trying,
and when it was all over she had something that was very nearly a breakdown. She slept badly, and suffered
from nervous indigestion. Dr. Libbard used to call every other day. She talked to him a great deal mostly
about the Hutton case.... Her moral indignation was always on the boil. Wasn't it appalling to think that one
had had a murderer in one's house. Wasn't it extraordinary that one could have been for so long mistaken
about the man's character? (But she had had an inkling from the first.) And then the girl he had gone off with
so low class, so little better than a prostitute. The news that the second Mrs. Hutton was expecting a baby the
posthumous child of a condemned and executed criminal revolted her; the thing was shocking an obscenity.
Dr. Libbard answered her gently and vaguely, and prescribed bromide.
One morning he interrupted her in the midst of her customary tirade. "By the way," he said in his soft,
melancholy voice, "I suppose it was really you who poisoned Mrs. Hutton."
Miss Spence stared at him for two or three seconds with enormous eyes, and then quietly said, "Yes." After
that she started to cry.
"In the coffee, I suppose."
She seemed to nod assent. Dr. Libbard took out his fountain-pen, and in his neat, meticulous calligraphy wrote
out a prescription for a sleeping-draught.
II: PERMUTATIONS AMONG THE NIGHTINGALES
A PLAY
IT is night on the terrace outside the Hotel Cimarosa. Part of the garden facade of the hotel is seen at the back
of the stage a bare white wall, with three French windows giving on to balconies about ten feet from the
ground, and below them, leading from the terrace to the lounge, a double door of glass, open now, through
which a yellow radiance streams out into the night. On the paved terrace stand two or three green iron tables
and chairs. To the left a mass of dark foliage, ilex and cypress, in the shadow of which more tables and chairs
are set. At the back to the left a strip of sky is visible between the corner of the hotel and the dark trees, blue
and starry, for it is a marvellous June evening. Behind the trees the ground slopes steeply down and down to
an old city in the valley below, of whose invisible presence you are made aware by the sound of many bells
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wafted up from a score of slender towers in a sweet and melancholy discord that seems to mourn the passing
of each successive hour. When the curtain rises the terrace is almost deserted; the hotel dinner is not yet over.
A single guest, COUNT ALBERTO TIRETTA, is discovered, sitting in a position of histrionic despair at one
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