And he remembered back through those hours since midnight, when his soul had still faltered before the taking of human life, how it had sought some other way, some alternative, _any_ alternative. A jail sentence for Crang. There was enough, more than enough now with the evidence of Crang's double life, to convict the man for the robbery of that safe. But Claire had answered that in the long ago: “I will marry him when he comes out.” Or, then, to get Crang away again like this afternoon--no, _yesterday_ afternoon. It was _this_ morning, in a few hours, that they were to be married. There was no time left in which to attempt anything like that; but, even if there were, he knew now, that it but postponed the day of reckoning. Claire would wait. Crang would come back.
If he didn't, Crang would kill him. He knew that, too. But his decision was not actuated, or even swayed, by any consideration of self-preservation. He had no thought of his future or his safety. That was already settled. With his decision was irrevocably coupled the forfeiting of his own life. Not his own life! It belonged to Claire. Claire had bought it. He was only giving it back that the abysmal price she had agreed to pay should not be extorted from her. Once he had accomplished his purpose, he would give himself up to the police.
That was what had been born out of the travail of those hours of the night. But there were other things to do first. He walked briskly now. The decision in itself no longer occupied his thoughts. The decision was absolute; it was final. It was those “other things” that he must consider now. There was Larmon. He could not tell Larmon what he, John Bruce, was going to do, but he must warn Larmon to be on his guard against any past or present connection with John Bruce coming to light. Fortunately Larmon had come to New York and registered as Peters. He must make Larmon understand that Larmon and John Bruce had never met, even if he could not give Larmon any specific reason or explanation. Larmon would probably refuse at first, and attribute it as an attempt to break, for some ulterior reason, the bond they had signed together that night on the beach at Apia.
John Bruce smiled gravely. The bond would be broken in any case. Faustus was at the end of the play. A few months in prison, the electric chair--how apt had been his whistling of that aria _in his youth!_