'Day here,' he thought, 'and I still helpless! This must come to an
end.' And he locked up the piano, put the key in his pocket, and set
forth in quest of coffee. As he went, his mind trudged for the hundredth
time a certain mill-road of terrors, misgivings, and regrets. To call
in the police, to give up the body, to cover London with handbills
describing John Dickson and Ezra Thomas, to fill the papers with
paragraphs, Mysterious Occurrence in the Temple--Mr Forsyth admitted to
bail, this was one course, an easy course, a safe course; but not, the
more he reflected on it, not a pleasant one. For, was it not to publish
abroad a number of singular facts about himself? A child ought to
have seen through the story of these adventurers, and he had gaped and
swallowed it. A barrister of the least self-respect should have refused
to listen to clients who came before him in a manner so irregular, and
he had listened. And O, if he had only listened; but he had gone upon
their errand--he, a barrister, uninstructed even by the shadow of
a solicitor--upon an errand fit only for a private detective; and
alas!--and for the hundredth time the blood surged to his brow--he had
taken their money! 'No,' said he, 'the thing is as plain as St Paul's.
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