The One Thing the Landlady Was Always Scolding About

He was thinking of the chief point, and put off trifling details until he could believe in it all. He had come gradually to many different and curious conclusions. The chief reason lay not so much in the material impossibility of concealing the crime, as in the criminal himself. Almost every criminal is subject to a failure of will and reasoning power by a childish and phenomenal heallessness at the very instant when prudence and caution are most essential. His final decisions were what he came to trust least, and when the hour struck, it all came to pass quite differently - accidentally and unexpectedly.