Seeing myself unobserved, I took the old-fashioned watch key from the chain and quickly turned back the hands of the watch a full hour; then, closing the case, I handed Bartine his property, and saw him replace it.
“I think you said,” I began, with assumed carelessness, “that after eleven the sight of the dial no longer affects you. As it is now nearly twelve”--looking at my own timepiece--”perhaps, if you don’t resent my pursuit of proof, you will look at it now.”
He smiled good-humoredly, pulled out the watch again, opened it, and instantly sprang to his feet with a cry that Heaven has not had the mercy to permit me to forget! His eyes, their blackness strikingly intensified by the absolute pallor of his face, were fixed upon the watch, which he clutched in both hands.
For some time he remained in that attitude without uttering another sound; then, in a voice that I should not have recognized as his, he said:
“D----n you! it is two minutes to eleven.”
I was not unprepared for some such outbreak, and without rising replied, calmly enough:
“I beg your pardon; I must have misread your watch in setting my own by it.”
He shut the case with a sharp snap and put the watch in his pocket. He looked at me and made an attempt to smile; but his lower lip quivered and he seemed unable to close his mouth. His hands, also, were shaking and he thrust them clenched into his coat pockets.
The courageous spirit was manifestly endeavoring to subdue the coward body. The effort was too great. He began to sway from side to side, as from vertigo; and before I could spring from my chair to support him his knees gave way and he pitched awkwardly forward and fell upon his face--dead!
The post-mortem examination disclosed nothing; every organ was normal and sound. But when the body had been prepared for burial a faint, dark circle, as if made by contusion, was seen to have developed about the neck; at least, I was so assured by several persons who said they saw it; but of my own knowledge I cannot say if that was true.
Nor can I affirm my knowledge of the limitations of the principle of heredity. I do not know that in the spiritual, as in the temporal, world natural laws have no post-facto validity. Surely, if I were to guess at the fate of Bramwell Olcott Bartine, I should guess that he was hanged at eleven o’clock in the evening, and that he had been allowed several hours in which to prepare for the change.