That first night wore by, and nothing came of it all. The morning dragged away, and my fellow-criminal seemingly encountered nothing worthy of rehearsal to me. Then still another night came and went. I went through the published hospital reports, and the police records, with my heart in my mouth. But I could unearth no official account of the tragedy. I even encountered my good friend Patrolman McCooey, apparently by accident, and held him up on his beat about Gramercy Park to make casual inquiries as to street-accidents, and if such things were increasing of late. But nothing of moment, apparently, had come to McCooey's ears. And I stood watching him as he flatfooted his way placidly on from my house-front, with one of my best cigars tucked under his tunic, wondering what the world would say if it knew that Witter Kerfoot, the intrepid creator of sinewy supermen who snarl and fight and shake iron fists in the teeth of Extremity, had run like a rabbit from a human being he had bowled over and killed? I still hoped against hope, however, trying to tell myself that it is no easy thing to knock the life out of a man, passionately upbraiding myself for not doing what I should have done to succor the injured, then sinkingly remembering what Latreille had mentioned about the weight of my car. Yet it wasn't until the next night, as I ventured out to step into that odiously ponderous engine of destruction, that uncertainty solidified into fact. "_You got him_," announced my chauffeur out of one side of his mouth, so that Benson, who stood on the house-steps, might not overhear those fateful words. "Got him?" I echoed, vaguely resenting the man's use of that personal pronoun singular. "Killed!" was Latreille's monosyllabic explanation. And my heart stopped beating. "How do you know that?" I demanded in whispering horror. For I understood enough of the law of the land to know that a speeder who flees from the victim of his carelessness is technically guilty of manslaughter. "A man I know, named Crotty, helped carry the body back to his house. Crotty's just told me about it." My face must have frightened Latreille, for he covered his movement of catching hold of my arm by ceremoniously opening the car door for me. "Sit tight, man!" he ordered in his curt and conspiratorial undertone. "Sit tight--for it's all that's left to do!" I sat tight. It was all there was to do. I endured Latreille's accession of self-importance without comment. There promptly grew up between us a tacit understanding of silence. Yet I had reason to feel that this silence wasn't always as profound as it seemed. For at the end of my third day of self-torturing solitude I went to my club to dine. I went with set teeth. I went in the hope of ridding my system of self-fear, very much as an alcoholic goes to a Turkish-bath. I went to mix once more with my fellows, to prove that I stood on common ground with them.