College students -- Fiction; Murder -- Fiction; Murderers -- Fiction
"I know that some one told him," Olva said quietly, "because I told
him."
"Then you know who----" Craven's voice was a whisper.
"I know," said Olva, "because it was I who killed Carfax."
Craven took it---the moment for which he'd been waiting so long--in the
most amazing way.
"Oh!" he cried, like a child who has cut its finger. "Oh! I wish
you hadn't!" There was the whole of Craven's young struggle with an
astounding world in that cry.
Then, after that, there was a long silence, and had some one come into
the room he would have looked at the two men before the fire and have
supposed that they were gently and comfortably falling off to sleep.
Olva at last said; "Of course I know that you have suspected me for a
long time. Everything played into your hands. I have done my very utmost
to prevent your having positive proof of the thing, but that part of the
business is now done with. You know, and you can do what you please with
the knowledge."
But, now that the moment had come, Rupert Craven could do nothing with
it.
"I don't want to do anything," he muttered at last. "I'm not up to doing
anything. I don't understand it. I'm not the sort of fellow who ought to
be in this kind of thing at all."
That was how he now saw it, as an unfair advantage that had been taken
of him. This point of view changed his position to the extent of his now
almost appealing to Olva to help him out of it.
"Your telling me like that has made it all so difficult. I feel now
suddenly as though I hated Carfax and hadn't the least objection to
somebody doing for him. And _that's_ all wrong--murder's an awful
thing--one ought to feel bad about it." Then finally, with the cry of
a child in the dark, "But this _isn't_ life, it never _has_ been
life since that day I heard of Carfax being killed. It's the sort of
thing--it's been for weeks the sort of thing--that you read of in books
or see at the Adelphi; and I'm not that kind of fellow. I tell you I've
been mad all this last month, getting it on the brain, seeing things
night and day. My one idea was to make you own up to it, but I never
thought of what was going to happen when you did."
Olva let him work it out.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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