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pieced together what he knew and what he suspected. Alan had
murdered some one: possibly 'that man' against whom the
butler chained the door in Regent Terrace; possibly another;
some one at least: a human soul, whom it was death to slay
and whose blood lay spilled upon the floor. This was the
reason of the whisky drinking in the passage, of his
unwillingness to welcome John, of his strange behaviour and
bewildered words; this was why he had started at and harped
upon the name of murder; this was why he had stood and
hearkened, or sat and covered his eyes, in the black night.
And now he was gone, now he had basely fled; and to all his
perplexities and dangers John stood heir.
'Let me think - let me think,' he said, aloud, impatiently,
even pleadingly, as if to some merciless interrupter. In the
turmoil of his wits, a thousand hints and hopes and threats
and terrors dinning continuously in his ears, he was like one
plunged in the hubbub of a crowd. How was he to remember -
he, who had not a thought to spare - that he was himself the
author, as well as the theatre, of so much confusion? But in
hours of trial the junto of man's nature is dissolved, and
anarchy succeeds.
It was plain he must stay no longer where he was, for here
was a new Judicial Error in the very making. It was not so
plain where he must go, for the old Judicial Error, vague as
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