E. Nesbit

“ If he were asked whether any other chap had done anything—been out of bounds, or up to any sort of lark—he would always say, "I don't know, sir, but I believe so." He never did know—we took care of that. But what he believed was always right. I remember Haldane twisting his arm to say how he knew about that cherry-tree business, and he only said, "I don't know—I just feel sure. And I was right, you see." What can you do with a boy like that?
We grew up to be men. At least Haldane and I did. Visger grew up to be a prig. ”

“ I hope I sha'n't die in the dark, Winston. That's one of the reasons why I think I shall have to kill myself. I could be sure then of not dying in the dark."
"Is that all?" I asked, feeling sure that it must be.
"No," said Haldane at once, "that's not all. He's come back to me again. In a railway carriage it was. I'd been asleep. When I woke up, there he was lying on the seat opposite me. Looked just the same. Felt just the same. I pitched him out on the line in Red Hill Tunnel. And if I see him again, I'm going out myself. I can't stand it. It's too much. ”

“ So then I said, 'There wasn't any madness in my family before, but there is now,' and I got hold of his throat. I am not sure whether I meant to kill him. I ought to have meant to kill him. Anyhow, I did kill him. What did you say?"
I had said nothing. It is not easy to think at once of the tactful and suitable thing to say, when your oldest friend tells you that he is a murderer.
"When I could get my hands out of his throat—it was as difficult as it is to drop the handles of a galvanic battery—he fell in a lump on the hearthrug. ”

“ Men were moving his furniture into a big van with somebody's Pantechnicon painted on it in big letters.
He had left no address with the porter, and had driven off in a hansom with two portmanteaux—to Waterloo, the porter thought.
Well, a man has a right to the monopoly of his own troubles, if he chooses to have it. And I had troubles of my own that kept me busy.
II.
It was more than a year later that I saw Haldane again. I had got rooms in the Albany by this time, and he turned up there one morning, very early indeed—before breakfast in fact. ”

“ Stretched on the bed beyond him was a dead man, white and very cold.
Haldane had died in the dark.
It was all so simple.
We had come to the wrong room. The man the room belonged to was there, on the bed he had engaged and paid for before he died of heart disease, earlier in the day. A French commis voyageur representing soap and perfumery: his name, Felix Leblanc.
Later, in England, I made cautious enquiries. The body of a man had been found in the Red Hill tunnel—a haberdasher named Simmons, who had drunk spirits of salts, owing to the depression of trade. ”

“ And we were as jolly as sandboys—soberish sandboys—together all those months.
And we came to Bruges at last in our travels, and Bruges was very full, because of the exhibition. We could only get one room and one bed. So we tossed for the bed, and the one who lost the toss was to make the best of the night in the arm-chair. And the bed-clothes we were to share equitably. ”