Was Chauchat mad? Yes, clearly. How otherwise could he imagine that he had come from Shergold, that he had spoken with a dead man? Shergold's death—that was the one certain fact in all this bewildering world. He had sat there, at the table, just where Chauchat was seated now. They had quarrelled. Le Mesurier had followed him from that very door, out into the mist. . . .
But all at once a point of doubt pierced his soul. Had he followed Shergold? Had he in truth followed Shergold out into the mist?
Was Chauchat mad? Or—or—was he mad himself? Something inside his head throbbed so violently, he could not even think. He sat stunned and dazed by the table holding his head in his hands, while the old man talked on. But while he sat there in dumb, inert confusion, his sub-conscious brain was at work, rearranging the past, disentangling the threads of illusion from those of reality, arranging these on this side, those on that, clearly, unmistakably. And when all was ready, suddenly the web of deception fell from before his eyes, and he saw clearly. Up to the moment of Shergold's leaving the cottage all had passed as he remembered it: the rest had been a mere phantasmal creation of his own brain.
His hands were clean of blood, he had committed no crime, he might go where he chose, he was guiltless, he was free. . . . . And—and during all the past months, when he had been tortured with self-condemnations, Shergold had been living his usual happy, respectable and respected life, seeing Lily every day, seeing the child . . . . Oh! . . . . Le Mesurier's feelings underwent a complete revulsion; his remorse shrivelled up, his pity vanished, his old hatred returned reinforced a thousandfold—and he was filled with regret, a gnawing, an intolerable regret that his hand had failed to accomplish the sin which his heart had desired.
