He swore in a whisper.

The maid tapped at the door. He opened it an inch or so and sent her
off. In view of his new determination even the maid had become a danger.
She was the same elderly woman who looked after his own bedroom, and
she might have known Clark. Just what Providence had kept him from
recognition before this he did not know, but it could not go on
indefinitely.

After an hour or so Bassett locked the door behind him and went down to
lunch. He was not hungry, but he wanted to get out of the room, to think
without that quiet figure before him. Over the pretence of food he faced
the situation. Lying ready to his hand was the biggest story of his
career, but he could not carry it through. It was characteristic of
him that, before abandoning it, he should follow through to the end the
result of its publication. He did not believe, for instance, that
either Dick's voluntary surrender or his own disclosure of the situation
necessarily meant a conviction for murder. To convict a man of a crime
he did not know he had committed would be difficult. But, with his
customary thoroughness he followed that through also. Livingstone
acquitted was once again Clark, would be known to the world as Clark.
The new place he had so painfully made for himself would be gone. The
story would follow him, never to be lived down. And in his particular
profession confidence and respect were half the game. All that would be
gone.