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Post, Melville Davisson, 1871?-1930

"The Sleuth of St. James's Square"

Then some day, all at once,
you go down, cold all over like a dead man . . . that time you
don't die, but the next time . . . "
Barclay snapped his fingers without adding the word.'
"And you can calculate when the second one will strike you. It's
a hundred and eighty-one days to the hour."
Then he added:
"That was the first one on the dock. Tavor had six months to
live."
The big man broke the cigarette in his fingers and threw the
pieces into the fire. Then he turned abruptly toward me.
"And I know where he wanted to live for those six months. The
old dream was still with him. He wanted that country house in
his native county in England, with the formal garden and the
lackeys. The finish didn't bother him, but he wanted to round
out his life with the dream that he had carried about with him.
"I put him to bed and went down into Broadway, and walked about
all night. Tavor couldn't go back and he had to have a bunch of
money.
"It was no good. I couldn't see it. I went back Tavor was up
and I sat him down to a cross examination that would have
delighted the soul of a Philadelphia lawyer.


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