“Splendid! Go on. This is too good to be true. It is really such a sweet reversal of form—expecting the bad eggs to hatch. Isn’t that Julian Prentice out there with Joel? Who did _he_ kill—his crippled grandmother or something?”
“Not so bad as that—or I wouldn’t have let him engage himself to Joel. No, he merely drowned a boy who was all but drowning him during the hazing of freshmen at the University. He pretended cramp to do it. Everything appeared accidental, and of course sympathy was with Julian anyway. There is one other, who makes the fourth man—irrespective of ourselves, and we don’t count. Milton Dorn I doubt whether you know. He is an able surgeon; but he also has a secret laboratory, or operating room, where he experiments on the conscious flesh to the point, but not beyond the point, where life still lingers. I should imagine that would be all you need know about him.”
“Absolutely! My only wonder is that you didn’t apply directly to him for release.”
“I thought of that. But then, as I’ve said, it’s a long row he hoes and I’m looking for a short one. There, Belknap, I guess that tells the tale in brief, doesn’t it?”
“No, not altogether, Judge. There is a point on which I need to be enlightened, with a bright, bright light. Where do I come in?”
“I thought I had made that clear. You are here to find good sport, but to be a spoil-sport.”
“You mean the Diary—why, man alive, it makes something like a hero of you. My admiration is written all over it. Perhaps it shouldn’t be. _Have_ you committed murder?”
Belknap laughed. “It’s not the time to admit it exactly, is it?”
A silence fell between them. Belknap broke it with another question.
“I thought I might bring it up at dinner. Unobtrusively. Casualness will at first bewilder them. The horror of the situation will dawn on them gradually.”
“No one. Except perhaps Nadia. I mentioned to her the other day that it would be fun to publish my Diary verbatim seeing what a number of things it contains. Her answer was, that if I proposed doing so I would probably never live to see it in print. That sounds hopeful. Oh, of course nothing at all may happen. They may decide to take their medicine for the old rather than be on with the new. I think that would be my solution provided I was in their shoes. And then again anything may happen. Psychologically it’s a pretty how-de-do. To throw half a dozen killers together, even civilized ones (in fact the more civilized the more interesting), makes for a strange medley.”