Chapter XL. The Bolt Falls

All the way home on that long journey from Cape Town, as the two half-brothers lounged on deck together in their canvas chairs, Granville Kelmscott was wholly at a loss to understand what seemed to him Guy Waring's unaccountable and almost incredible levity. The man's conduct didn't in the least resemble that of a person who is returning to give himself up on a charge of wilful murder. On the contrary, Guy showed no signs of remorse or mental agony in any way; he seemed rather elated, instead, at the pleasing thought that he was going home, with his diamonds all turned at the Cape into solid coin, to make his peace once more with his brother Cyril.

To be sure, at times he did casually allude to some expected unpleasantness when he arrived in England; yet he treated it, Granville noticed, as though hanging were at worst but a temporary inconvenience. Granville wondered whether, after all, he could have some complete and crushing answer to that appalling charge; on any other supposition, his spirits and his talk were really little short of what one might expect from a madman.

And indeed, now and again, Granville did really begin to suspect that something had gone wrong somewhere with Guy Waring's intellect. The more he thought over it, the more likely did this seem, for Guy talked on with the greatest composure about his plans for the future "when this difficulty was cleared up," as though a trial for murder were a most ordinary occurrence--an accident that might happen to any gentleman any day. And, if so, was it possible that Guy had gone wrong in his head before the affray with Montague Nevitt? That seemed likely enough; for when Granville remembered Guy's invariable gentleness and kindness to himself, his devotion in sickness and in the trials of the desert, his obvious aversion to do harm to any one, and, above all, his heartfelt objection to shedding human blood, Granville was constrained to believe his newly found half-brother, if ever he committed the murder at all, must have committed it while in a state of unsound mind, deserving rather of pity than of moral reprehension. He comforted himself, indeed, with this consoling idea--he could never believe a Kelmscott of Tilgate, when clothed and in his right mind, could be guilty of such a detestable and motiveless crime as the wilful murder of Montague Nevitt.

Strangely enough, moreover, the subject that seemed most to occupy Guy Waring's mind, on the voyage home, was not his forthcoming trial on a capital charge, but the future distribution of the Tilgate property. Was he essentially a money-grubber, Granville wondered to himself, as he had thought him at first in the diamond fields in Barolong land? Was he incapable of thinking about anything but filthy lucre? No; that was clearly not the true solution of the problem, for, whenever Guy spoke to him about the subject, it was generally to say one and the self-same thing--

"In this