Yet that was not the last of their morbid conversations; they would hardly be five minutes together before the noxious subject would crop up, nearly always through some reluctant yet irresistible allusion on the patient's part. The doctor might come in overflowing with deliberate gaiety; there was something about him that set the bulbous eyes rolling with uneasy cunning, the cockney tongue wagging in its solitary strain, as it were under protest from the beaded brow. On one occasion Dollar was the prime offender. It was the day after Croucher's introduction to De Quincey and the first bad night spent by anybody in the Chamber of Peace. He declared he had not slept a wink, and was advised to get up and go for a walk. "Alone?" said Croucher in a low voice. "Why not? This isn't prison, and I never hear you cough. _You_ are not going to die just yet, Croucher!" "I 'ope nobody is, not 'ere," said Croucher, with a horrid twitch. "I feel as it _might_ buck me up--a breff of air on a nice fine day like this." His eyes rolled undecidedly, and the oil ran out of his voice. "But it ain't no fun goin' out alone." "Haven't you any friends you could go and see?" "No!" cried Croucher, with an emphasis that pulled him up. "I--I might write a letter, though--if you could spare me a bit o' paper wiv the address." It was a very short letter that Alfred Croucher wrote, but a remarkably thick envelope that he himself took to the post, after looking many times up and down the street. And at the pillar-box, which was not many yards from the door, he again hesitated sadly before thrusting it in. In the afternoon Dollar took him out in the car, and then it was that for once the poisonous topic was not introduced by Mr. Croucher. "See that house?" said Dollar, pointing out one of the most modest in the purlieus of Park Lane. "There was no end of a murder _there_ once. Swiss valet cut his master's throat, made what he flattered himself were the hall-marks of burglars, and had the nerve to go into the room to wake the dead man up next morning." "Fair swine, eh?" said Mr. Croucher, with all the symptoms of disgust. "A very fair artist, too," rejoined the disciple of De Quincey. "That wasn't his only good touch. He cut the old gentleman's throat from ear to ear, and yet there wasn't a spot of blood on his garments. How do you suppose he managed that? It's a messy operation, Croucher; you or I would have made a walking shambles of ourselves!" "How did he manage it?" asked Croucher, in a shaky growl. "By taking off every stitch before he did the trick. How about that for a tip?" Croucher made no reply. His teeth were clenched like those of a man bearing physical pain. They were nearly out of town, and Dollar had discoursed upon autumn tints and the nip in the air before being abruptly interrogated as to the "fair swine's" fate.