“They are not fancies,” he retorted. “They are weighty realities. I thought for a long time that the inheritance had passed me by. But when the first of those letters came, I knew that the legacy had fallen in. And every new menace sets the impulse working. Whenever one of those letters come I feel it; I find myself thinking of my mother and my brother, and wondering if they felt the same. Then I take a stiff whisky, and the feeling goes off. But I don’t care, nowadays, to go to bed until I have taken a dose of veronal.” “Why not?” I asked. He drew himself to the edge of the bed, and, thrusting his head out, peered into a shadowy corner of the room with a sort of half-terrified, half-exultant leer that seemed to stir the very marrow of my bones. “What is it, Mr. Otway?” I asked, staring into the corner but seeing nothing. “Do you see it, Helen?” he said, rolling his eyes at me and then looking back into the corner, which was in a line with the bed-head; “that great hook, or bent peg. I can’t imagine what it was put there for; but there it is, like a great metal finger, beckoning--beckoning.” I looked at the object that he indicated--a massive curved peg or hook fixed to the wall about seven feet from the floor--and shivered slightly. Its appearance was horribly suggestive. “When I used to lie awake,” Mr. Otway continued, still gazing into the corner, “after the first letters came, I could lie on my left side, because then it was behind me and I seemed to feel it drawing me. I had to turn so that I could see it; and whenever I looked at it, it seemed to beckon. And so it does now.” “I should have it unscrewed and taken away,” said I. “Yes,” he replied, reflectively, “perhaps it might be--and yet I don’t know. Perhaps I might be more restless if it were not there. It is, in a way, a satisfaction to know that--ah--that I hold a trump card that I can play if--ah--if all the other cards are against me.” As he spoke, he looked at me with that same curious half-frightened, half-exultant expression that made me wonder whether perhaps his inheritance included a dash of insanity. Then he rolled back to the middle of the bed and lay staring at the ceiling; and by degrees the excitement faded out of his face and he recovered his usual stolid gravity of expression. Presently he glanced at the little carriage clock that stood on the table, and, turning to me, said: “I usually take my veronal about this time. Would you mind giving me a glass of water and the tablets?” I rose from my chair, and as I did so my little wrist-bag, which had been reposing, forgotten, on my lap, slipped to the floor. I picked it up and hung it on the knob of the chair-back, and then fetched the water-bottle and tumbler from the wash-stand. Having filled the tumbler and handed it to Mr. Otway, I picked up the veronal bottle, and seeing that it was a new one, broke the seal, withdrew the cork and pulled out the cotton-wool packing.