The hot blood flamed in Lancaster's face, and with a stifled roar of anger he threw the heavy decanter he was holding at Philip Trevanna's head. It struck him full on the temple, and without a word the young man fell like a log on the floor, while the decanter, smashing into a thousand pieces, was scattered over the carpet, and the contents diffused an odour of spirits through the room. There was a dead silence for one awful moment, broken only by the steady tick of the clock. Suddenly a woman in the street laughed shrilly, and the sound seemed to arouse Adrian out of the lethargy into which he had fallen. A red mist floated before his eyes and his limbs seemed paralysed. Even when he strove to cry out his voice died away in a hoarse whisper, and he stood with a terrible look of anguish on his face staring at the overturned card-table, the broken pieces of glass, and the figure lying at his feet so still and deathlike, with a thin red stream of blood flowing from an ugly wound in the temple. Once more the woman laughed, and Adrian rapidly sprang to the windows, in a stealthy manner, closed them and pulled down the blinds so as to shut out this terrible sight from the eyes of the prying world. A sullen roll of thunder startled him, and with a hurried glance around he crept towards the still form of his friend. "Philip," he whispered, kneeling beside Trevanna's body, "Philip." No answer! Adrian opened Trevanna's shirt and placed his hand on the heart--it did not beat--he leaned his face downward to the slightly parted lips; there was no breath, and then, for the first time, a sense of what he had done seemed to break on him. "Dead!" he whispered with ashen grey lips, in a paroxysm of terror, clasping his hands. "Dead!--I've killed him." He arose slowly to his feet, looked vacantly round the room, at the still, white face, at the stream of blood, then staggering to a side table he snatched up a bottle of whisky, and without waiting to fill a glass placed it to his lips. The fiery spirit put new life into him, and as his blood coursed swiftly through his veins, he braced his muscles, shook his head to clear the clouds which seemed to fog his brain, and nerved himself for action. "I can't stay here," he whispered to himself, putting one hand up to his throat, "they would arrest me for murder--I would be hanged--Oh, God, the disgrace--poor Olive!" The storm so long threatening had burst at last over the city, and the rain was pouring down with tropical violence, while every now and then, through the interstices of the Venetian blinds, gleamed the blueish flash of the lightning, and the deep roll of thunder which followed seemed to the ears of Adrian like the voice of an accusing angel denouncing him as a murderer.