Rudolph Musgrave was not thinking of anything.  Presently he went around through the side entrance, and thus came into the kitchen, where the old mulattress, Virginia, was sitting alone.  The room was very hot....  In Agatha’s time supper would have been cooked upon the gas-range in the cellar, he reflected....  Virginia had risen and made as though to take his dress-suit case, her pleasant yellow face as imperturbable as an idol’s.

“No—­don’t bother, Virginia,” said Colonel Musgrave.

He met Patricia in the dining-room, on her way to the kitchen.  She had not chosen—­as even the most sensible of us will instinctively decline to do—­to vex the quiet of a house wherein death was by ringing a bell.

Holding his hand in hers, fondling it as she talked, Patricia told how three nights before Miss Agatha had been “queer, you know,” at supper.  Patricia had not liked to leave her, but it was the night of the Woman’s Club’s second Whist Tournament.  And Virginia had promised to watch Miss Agatha.  And, anyhow, Miss Agatha had gone to bed before Patricia left the house, and anybody would have thought she was going to sleep all night.  And, in fine, Patricia’s return at a drizzling half-past eleven had found Miss Agatha sitting in the garden, in her night-dress only, weeping over fancied grievances—­and Virginia asleep in the kitchen.  And Agatha had died that afternoon of pneumonia.

Even in the last half-stupor she was asking always when would Rudolph come?  Patricia told him....

Rudolph Musgrave did not say anything.  Without any apparent emotion he put Patricia aside, much as he did the dress-suit case which he had forgotten to lay down until Patricia had ended her recital.

He went upstairs—­to the front room, Patricia’s bedroom.  Patricia followed him.

Agatha’s body lay upon the bed, with a sheet over all.  The undertaker’s skill had arranged everything with smug and horrible tranquillity.

Rudolph Musgrave remembered he was forty-six years old; and when in all these years had there been a moment when Agatha—­the real Agatha—­had not known that what he had done was self-evidently correct, because otherwise Rudolph would not have done it?

“I trust you enjoyed your whist-game, Patricia.”

“Well, I couldn’t help it.  I’m not running a sanitarium.  I wasn’t responsible for her eternal drinking.”

The words skipped out of either mouth like gleeful little devils.

Then both were afraid, and both were as icily tranquil as the thing upon the bed.  You could not hear anything except the clock upon the mantel.  Colonel Musgrave went to the mantel, opened the clock, and with an odd deliberation removed the pendulum from its hook.  Followed one metallic gasp, as of indignation, and then silence.

He spoke, still staring at the clock, his back turned to Patricia.  “You must be utterly worn out.  You had better go to bed.”