Philip Van Doren Stern (ed) (139 page)

Paris
jewel,
he
felt
hell
surge
within
him.
But
he
beat
his
thoughts down
for
a
while,
and
went
on
his
little,
laboured
way.

The
success
of
the
story
and
Burford's
bitter
eclipse
helped
Esplan greatly,
and
he
might
have
got
saner
if
other
influences
working
for misery
in
his
life
had
not
hurt
him.
For
a
certain
woman
died,
one whom
none
knew
to
be
his
friend,
and
he
clung
to
morphine,
which, in
its
increase,
helped
to
throw
him
later.

And
at
last
the
crash
did
come,
for
Burford
had
two
stories,
better far
than
his
usual
work,
in
a
magazine
that
Esplan
looked
on
as
his own.
They
were
on
Esplan's
very
motives;
he
had
them
almost
ready to
write.
The
sting
of
this
last
bitter
blow
drove
him
off
his
tottering balance;
he
conceived
murder,
and
plotted
it
brutally,
and
then
subtly, and
became
dominated
by
it,
till
his
life
was
the
flower
of
the
insane motive.
It
altered
nothing
that
a
reviewer
pointed
out
the
close
resemblance
between
the
two
men's
work,
and,
exalting
Esplan's
genius, placed
one
writer
beyond
all
cavil,
the
other
below
all
place.

But
that
drove
Burford
crazy.
It
was
so
bitterly
true.
He
ground his
teeth,
and
hating
his
own
work,
hated
worse
the
man
who
destroyed
his
own
conceit.
He
wanted
to
do
harm.
How
should
he
do
it?

Esplan
had
long
since
gone
under.
He
was
a
homicidal
maniac,
with one
man
before
him.
He
conceived
and
wrote
schemes.
His
stories
ran to
murder.
He
read
and
imagined
means.
At
times
he
was
in
danger of
believing
he
had
already
done
the
deed.
One
wild
day
he
almost gave
himself
up
for
this
proleptic
death.
Thus
his
imagination
burnt and
flamed
before
his
conceived
path.

"I'll
do
it,
I'll
do
it,"
he
muttered;
and
at
tire
club
the
men
talked about
him.

"To-morrow,"
he
said,
and
then
he
put
it
off.
He
must
consider
the art
of
it.
He
left
it
to
bourgeon
in
his
fertile
brain.
And
at
last,
just
as he
wrote,
action,
lighted
up
by
strange
circumstances,
began
to
loom big
before
him.
Such
a
murder
would
wake
a
vivid
world,
and
be
an epoch
in
crime.
If
the
red
earth
were
convulsed
in
war,
even
then would
it
stay
to
hear
that
incredible,
true
story,
and,
soliciting
deeper knowledge,
seek
out
the
method
and
growth
of
means
and
motive. He
chuckled
audibly
in
the
street,
and
laughed
thin
laughter
in
his room
of
fleeting
visions.
At
night
he
walked
the
lonely
streets
near
at hand,
considering
eagerly
the
rush
of
his
own
divided
thoughts,
and leaning
against
the
railings
of
the
leafy
gardens,
he
saw
ghosts
in
the moon
shadows
and
beckoned
them
to
converse.
He
became
a
night-bird
and
was
rarely
seen.