The Meaning of Night Read Online Free Page B

that served as both wardrobe and wash-room.

    The face that greeted me in the little cracked mirror that stood on a shelf above
    the wash-stand in this cubicle did not seem, to my objective gaze, to be the face of a
    cold-blooded murderer. The eyes looked back genially, and with calm intensity. Here was
    a face to trust, to confide in; yet I had despatched another human being with almost as
    little thought as I might crush an insect. Was I, then, some dissimulating devil in human
    form? No. I was but a man, a good man at heart, if the truth be told, driven to set right the
    wrong that had been done to me, absolved – even of murder – by the implacable fatalities
    to which my life has been subject. You think there is no such thing as Fate? That we have
    free will under some benign Creator God? You are wrong. We are each destined to play
    out whatever part has been assigned to us by a determining power we can neither implore
    nor placate. To me, this power is the Iron Master, forever forging the chains that bind us
    to actions we must take, and to outcomes we must then suffer. My destiny is to take back
    what is rightfully mine, whatever the consequences. For the Iron Master has willed it.

    I peered a little closer into the mirror. A long lean face, with large, heavy-lidded
    dark eyes; olive-coloured skin; a nose perhaps a little skewed, but still finely shaped; a
    mouth that carried the merest hint of a smile, even in repose; black hair swept back from
    the forehead, innocent of macassar and abundant at the sides, but, I confess, receding fast,
    and greying a little at the temples. Fine mustachios. Very fine. Take me all in all, I
    believe I stood before the world as a moderately handsome fellow.

    But what was this? I moved my face closer to the grimy glass. There, on the very
    tip of my shirt collar, was a splash of dull red.

    I stood for a moment, bending towards the mirror, gripped by a sudden fascinated
    fear. This voiceless, yet still eloquent, witness to the night’s activities in Cain-court had
    taken me completely by surprise. Its pursuit of me seemed like a violation, and I quickly
    reviewed the dangerous possibilities it presented.

    Had it been enough to betray me? Had one of the waiters in Quinn’s noticed it
    when it had still been vivid and unequivocal, or the flower-seller when I had returned –
    foolishly, as it might now prove – to the scene of my crime? Had Bella observed it,
    despite the haste of passion? Any of these, on reading or hearing of the murder, might
    recall the presence of blood on my shirt, and suspicion might thence be aroused. I looked
    more closely at the incriminating relic of my experiment.

    It was insignificant enough in itself, certainly, though it constituted a very world
    of meaning. Here was a remnant of the life-blood of the stranger I had happened upon in
    Threadneedle-street as he went about his business, all unknowing of what was to befall
    him. Had he been returning home to his wife and children after a day in the City, or on
    his way to join a company of friends for dinner? What was his name, and who would
    mourn him? How had he seen his life ending? (Not in a pool of gore in a public
    thoroughfare, I warrant.) Did he have parents still alive whose hearts would break at the
    terrible demise of their dear son? Like a soldier in battle, I had ignored such questions in
    the heat of action, as being irrelevant to the task in hand; but now, as I stared at the little
    spot of dried blood on my collar, I could not prevent them rushing insistently into my
    mind.

    Were there other traces of the crime that I had failed to notice? I hastily took my
    great-coat from its peg and hurried into the sitting-room to spread it out on my
    work-table, grabbing an eye-glass from beneath a pile of papers as I did so.

    By the strengthening light of morning, I pored over every inch of the garment,
    turning the material methodically, occasionally bringing a piece up close to my