Bodney dropped the razor and sat down. "It is time to get up," he said. Goyle got out of bed and began to exercise himself by striking out with his fists. He had passed, he said, a night of delicious rest, with not a dream to disturb him. He whistled merrily as he dressed himself. Bodney stood with his elbow resting on the marble top of the "bureau," his face yellow and haggard. Glancing down into the half closed drawer, he saw the razor and shuddered at the sight of it. With his left hand he felt of his right arm, gripping it from shoulder down to wrist as if in some strange manner it had been deprived of strength. Goyle moved toward him and he pushed against the drawer to close it, but the keen eye of the "artist" fell upon the open razor, and glittered like the eye of a snake. But he showed no sign of fear or even of resentment.
"I will stay to breakfast with you," he said, putting his hand on Bodney’s shoulder.
"I wish you wouldn’t," Bodney feebly replied.
"Oh, no you don’t. Come, brace up now. My part of the work is done, but yours is just beginning. I have saved you from suspicion, but you must keep yourself saved. That’s right, brighten up. Now you are beginning to look like yourself. Why, nothing so very bad has been done. We have enacted a little drama, that’s all. Such things, or things on a par with them, are enacted every day. The newspapers are full of stranger things. We haven’t hired a ’castle’ and entered upon a career of wholesale murder; we haven’t cut up a woman and made her into sausage."
The voice of William was heard in the passage, scolding a housemaid for disturbing his papers. The old man tapped on the door and Goyle opened it.
"Ah, you here?" said the old man, stepping into the room. "You’d better go in to breakfast. Well, sir, I never saw anything like it in my life. I can’t put a thing down and find it where I left it. George, what’s the matter with you this morning?"
"Nothing at all, sir. I had a headache and didn’t sleep very well. That’s all. Is the Judge up yet?"
"I believe not. And when he does get up I want to have a talk with him. I’ll be hanged if he didn’t get that preacher to laughing at me last night—laughing at me right here in my own house. I can stand a good deal, but when a preacher laughs at me, why things have gone too far."