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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 42750 ***
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+     1. Page scan source:
+        http://archive.org/details/tempestdrivenrom01dowl
+        (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                            TEMPEST-DRIVEN
+
+
+
+
+
+                            TEMPEST-DRIVEN
+
+                              A Romance.
+
+
+
+
+                                  BY
+
+                           RICHARD DOWLING,
+
+       AUTHOR OF "THE MYSTERY OF KILLARD," "THE WEIRD SISTERS,"
+  "THE SPORT OF FATE," "UNDER ST. PAUL'S," "THE DUKE'S SWEETHEART,"
+              "SWEET INISFAIL," "THE HIDDEN FLAME," ETC.
+
+
+
+
+                         _IN THREE VOLUMES_.
+
+                               VOL. I.
+
+
+
+
+
+                               LONDON:
+              TINSLEY BROTHERS, 8 CATHERINE ST., STRAND.
+                                1886.
+
+                       [_All rights reserved_.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                      CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS,
+                         CRYSTAL PLACE PRESS.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                              CONTENTS.
+
+
+                              CHAPTER I.
+
+IN THE DEAD OF THE NIGHT.
+
+
+                             CHAPTER II.
+
+FOUL PLAY?
+
+
+                             CHAPTER III.
+
+HINTS OF EARLY HISTORY.
+
+
+                             CHAPTER IV.
+
+SEEKING HELP.
+
+
+                              CHAPTER V.
+
+PRINGLE UNANSWERED.
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VI.
+
+HER SUDDEN RESOLVE.
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VII.
+
+LIGHT AFTER DARKNESS.
+
+
+                            CHAPTER VIII.
+
+MR. DAVENPORT'S ACCOUNT OF THE MATTER.
+
+
+                             CHAPTER IX.
+
+"WHICH OF US IS MAD?"
+
+
+                              CHAPTER X.
+
+THE ELDER PRINGLE SPEAKS.
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XI.
+
+"MRS. DAVENPORT WAS CALLED."
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XII.
+
+ANOTHER WITNESS.
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XIII.
+
+BLAKE'S EVIDENCE.
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XIV.
+
+ALFRED PAULTON'S WALK.
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XV.
+
+"I SHALL BE READY FOR MY DEATH WHEN THEY ARE READY FOR IT!"
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XVI.
+
+THE VERDICT.
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XVII.
+
+JERRY O'BRIEN'S PROPHECY.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                            TEMPEST-TOSSED
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER I.
+
+                        IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT.
+
+
+It was pitch dark, and long past midnight. The last train from the
+City had just steamed out of Herne Hill railway station. The air was
+clear and crisp. Under foot the ground was dry and firm with February
+frost. All the shops in the neighbourhood had long since been shut.
+Few lights burned in the fronts of private houses. The Dulwich Road
+was deserted, and looked dreary and forlorn under its tall, skeleton,
+motionless, silent trees. There was not a sound abroad save the
+gradually-dying rumble of the train, and the footfalls and voices of
+the few people who had alighted from it. Little by little these
+sounds died away, and the stillness was as great as in the pulseless
+heart of a calm at sea.
+
+Alfred Paulton had arrived by the last train. He was twenty-eight
+years of age, of middle height, and fair complexion. He lived in Half
+Moon Lane, and after saying good-night to some acquaintances who came
+out in the train with him, turned under the railway viaduct at Herne
+Hill, and walked in the direction of his home. He was in no hurry,
+for he knew his father and mother and sisters had gone to bed long
+ago. He had his latch-key, and should let himself in. His ulster
+covered him comfortably from neck to heel. He had supped pleasantly
+with a few friends at his club, the Robin Hood, and earlier in the
+day finished, a very agreeable transaction with his solicitor, and
+now had in his pocket a handsome bundle of notes.
+
+As he walked he swung his stick, and hummed in a whisper a few bars
+from the favourite air of a comic opera which he had been to hear
+that evening.
+
+Suddenly he started. As he was directly opposite the door of a house,
+standing back a few yards from the road, the door opened noisily, and
+he heard a woman's voice in a tone of piteous entreaty exclaim:
+
+"Oh, what shall I do--what shall I do?"
+
+Alfred Paulton drew up and listened. For a while all was silent.
+
+He looked over the paling, which was just as high as his chin. In the
+doorway of the house stood the figure of a woman against the light of
+a lamp on a table in the hall. The leafless boughs of the intervening
+shrubs prevented his getting an uninterrupted view, but he could in a
+brief glance gather a good deal.
+
+The figure was that of a woman neither tall nor short, neither stout
+nor thin. She was evidently not a servant. She wore an ordinary
+indoor costume, and had nothing on her head. Although she had
+scarcely moved since the opening of the door, he came to the
+conclusion she was of alert and active habit. He judged her to be
+neither old nor young. Her hair shone raven-black in the lamplight.
+The illumined cheek was finely modelled, dark in hue--that of a
+brunette. She leaned forward into the darkness, and peered right and
+left, moving her head but slightly as she did so. Something glittered
+in the starlight at her throat and at her girdle. Her hands were held
+behind her to balance the forward inclination of her body. On her
+fingers jewels sparkled in the lamplight of the hall behind her.
+
+All this he saw at a glance. He was perplexed, and did not know how
+to act. It was scarcely fair in him to stand there eaves-dropping, as
+it were. If he moved now she would hear him, and know he had seen her
+and had stopped to listen. If he spoke he might alarm her.
+
+Up to the moment the door opened and she appeared and called out, he
+believed this house to be empty. It had been vacant for a long time.
+Now he recollected having heard that it was let at last, and that the
+new tenant was expected to arrive this day. The place was called
+Crescent House. He had heard talk about the new-comers at the
+breakfast-table that morning; but nothing seemed known of them except
+that they came from a distance and were well off.
+
+The woman in the doorway now straightened herself, raised both hands
+to her forehead, and moaned out in a lower and more despairing tone
+her former words:
+
+"Oh, what shall I do--what shall I do?"
+
+He could hesitate no longer. It was plain she was in a sore strait.
+He coughed, advanced to the gate, and, putting his hand on the latch,
+said:
+
+"I beg your pardon. Is there anything wrong?"
+
+She started back a pace into the hall. In doing so her full face met
+the lamplight for a moment. It was a very beautiful face, full of
+terror.
+
+"Do not be alarmed," he said softly; "I was passing when you opened
+the door, and I heard you speak. Is there anything wrong? Anything I
+can do for you?"
+
+She seemed reassured, and stepped once more to the threshold, and
+said, in a quick, low voice:
+
+"I am a stranger here. I came to this house only to-day. I am alone
+with my husband in the house, and he has been seized by sudden
+illness. I do not know where to find a doctor, even if I could leave
+the house, and I cannot go away from my husband."
+
+"In what way can I be of use? Pray command me."
+
+He tried to open the gate, but failed.
+
+She perceived his efforts to open the gate, and once more withdrew a
+pace into the hall, crying in alarm:
+
+"No, no; you must not come in! If you wish to help me, go for the
+nearest doctor. Go at once. Do not stand there. In heaven's name, do
+not lose a moment! Go, I implore you."
+
+She clasped her hands, and held them out towards him in entreaty.
+
+"As you wish," he said. "I shall not be many minutes."
+
+He turned and ran back towards the railway station. Dr. Santley, the
+family physician of the Paultons, lived close by, and Alfred Paulton
+resolved to summon him, although he might not be exactly the nearest
+medical man. Time would be gained rather than lost by going for him,
+as Santley would come at once without waiting for explanations--that
+is, if he were at home.
+
+On his way he had little space to think, the time being short and the
+pace quick. He was more lucky than he had hoped, for he almost ran
+over the man he sought at the gate of his house.
+
+"Oh, doctor," he cried, almost breathless, "I am so glad to meet you
+up and dressed! I want you, if you will be good enough to come with
+me at once."
+
+"Mr. Paulton, I'm sorry. What is the matter? I have just come back
+from another unexpected patient.
+
+"It's no one at our place, thank goodness! It's some one at Crescent
+House. I don't even know the name."
+
+By this time both men were walking rapidly towards Half Moon Lane.
+
+Dr. Santley was a tall, slender man, with full black beard and
+moustaches. He had a quiet, gentle, responsible manner, and rarely
+smiled. As the two strode on together, Alfred Paulton described the
+scene in which he had just taken part. When he had finished, his
+companion said:
+
+"Ah, I saw the vans at the door to-day; but surely they cannot have
+got a big house like that straight in so short a time. Here we are."
+
+They had arrived at the spot where a few minutes before the younger
+man had stood and spoken to the strange woman in the doorway. The
+door was now not open.
+
+Paulton rattled noisily at the gate, and then waited a while. There
+was no answer. He looked at the windows of the house; none was
+lighted up. Light shone in the fan-sash over the door.
+
+"You cannot have mistaken the house in the dark?" asked Dr. Santley,
+suppressing a yawn.
+
+"Impossible! It was the only house to be let. It is Crescent House,
+and you yourself saw the furniture going in to-day."
+
+Again he rattled the gate, this time as loudly as he could.
+
+At length the door of the house was opened slowly, and against the
+light of the lamp the same figure as Paulton had seen before was
+revealed. Again the woman stood still on the threshold and leaned out
+into the darkness. This time she at once turned her face towards the
+gate.
+
+Before either of the men had time to speak, she said in a calm, low,
+penetrating voice:
+
+"Is the doctor there?
+
+"Yes," answered both in a breath.
+
+"I will open the gate in a moment."
+
+With a firm, swift step she left the doorway and trod the gravelled
+path leading to the gate. She did not hesitate or fumble at the
+latch. In a few seconds the gate swung open.
+
+"This is Dr. Santley; he is our family physician. He and I live close
+by. May I offer you my card? I and my family will, I am sure, feel
+delighted to be of any service to you," said Paulton, raising his
+hat.
+
+"Stay," she said. "Will you both come in? I am terrified. I do not
+know what has happened. I hope you are not too late."
+
+Her words were measured and her tone calm. Although the trees
+overhead were leafless, where she stood was dark, and neither of the
+men could see her clearly.
+
+Without further words she led the way back to the house. The two men
+followed in silence. When they entered the hall she turned round in
+the full light of the lamp, and, stretching out her right arm towards
+the first door on the left, said:
+
+"In that room. I shall wait for you. There is no other light. Take
+this lamp."
+
+Paulton now saw her fully. She was dark, almost swarthy. There was no
+colour in her cheek. Her forehead was small and compact. Her eyebrows
+and hair jet, glossy. Her eyes were dark, large, a little sunken,
+brilliant, and full of suppressed fire. The nose was slightly
+aquiline. The only relief to the dark hue of the face and the black
+of the eyebrows, hair, and eyes, was afforded by the full, red, ripe
+lips. And all the features, the forehead, the nose, the chin, the
+mouth, the cheeks, were finely modelled. The face was commanding,
+imperial, triumphant. It was as set and firm as marble. It was the
+face of an empress born to lead her legions to victory--of a woman in
+whom courage was a matter of course, who regarded obedience to her
+wish as a spontaneous offering. She had the immortality of
+indestructible will in her face, the weight of irresistible
+determination.
+
+With the face ended the heroic aspect of the woman.
+
+At her throat blazed the diamonds of a brooch large as the palm of
+her hand. On her fingers glittered a dozen diamond rings. The belt
+round her waist was fastened with a diamond clasp. The diamonds at
+her throat held an orange-coloured silk scarf. The rest of her dress
+was dead black, close-fitting to the figure, and full of folds below
+the waist. The arms were bare half-way from the elbow to the wrist.
+The figure, the arms, the hands were subduingly soft and feminine.
+The arms and wrists were round, the hands exquisitely delicate, with
+fine taper fingers, the bust a miracle of rich symmetry.
+
+It was the head of Boadicea on the figure of Rosamond.
+
+Dr. Santley took up the lamp from the hall table and entered the room
+she had indicated. Paulton paused for a moment in doubt as to whether
+he should go or stay. The hall lay now in comparative darkness; there
+was no light except what came through the open door of the front
+room.
+
+"Follow him."
+
+It was her voice.
+
+Paulton obeyed. As he got inside the doorposts he turned round and
+looked back into the hall. He could make out nothing but the glitter
+of the diamonds at her throat, in her girdle, on her fingers. They
+were stars against the darkness of her dress, as the stars abroad in
+heaven against the sightless robe of night.
+
+The room in which Dr. Santley and Paulton found themselves was in the
+greatest disorder. In one corner lay the carpet rolled up, in another
+the hearth-rug, fender, fire-irons, and coal-scuttle. All along the
+right side stood a row of chairs, one inverted on another. Pictures
+rested on the floor with their faces against the wall; the gaselier
+sprawled close by the window; the leaves of the dining-table were set
+against the folding-doors at the back. The drawers and pillars of the
+sideboard were hard by, the top and back of it stretched upward into
+the gloom of a deep recess; several boxes and canvas packages
+littered the floor. Two knights in plate-armour reclined one at each
+corner of the chimney-piece; easy-chairs were wedged in among
+amorphous bundles wrapped in Indian matting; rods and poles protruded
+from under legs of chairs, under bales heaped upon one another. A
+small table, face down upon another, held its slender legs up in air.
+Some fire still smouldered in the grate; the fire must have been
+large not long ago, for the room was still warm.
+
+In the centre of the room stood the dining-table, reduced to its
+smallest dimensions. On this were spread the remains of a simple
+supper. Close by the table stood a couch, and on the couch appeared
+the figure of a man.
+
+The figure was sitting up in the arm of the couch, the legs rested on
+the couch, the head drooped forward; the chin and lower part of the
+face were buried in the thick, long, grizzled beard that flowed down
+over the chest.
+
+Dr. Santley stepped up to the couch on which the figure lay, and
+having placed the lamp upon the table close at hand, began his
+examination. It did not take long. After a few minutes he turned to
+Paulton, and, pointing to the figure, shook his head.
+
+"Well?" asked the young man below his breath.
+
+The doctor went up to him and whispered in his ear:
+
+"Dead some time."
+
+Paulton looked round apprehensively at the door, and whispered back:
+
+"How will she take it?"
+
+The doctor shook his head.
+
+Both men stood staring at one another.
+
+Suddenly both started; they heard a footfall behind them. Some one
+had entered the room.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER II.
+
+                              FOUL PLAY?
+
+
+The two men turned quickly round. The light of the lamp fell on the
+black dress of the woman and sparkled on her diamonds. Her arms hung
+down by her side. Both hands were clenched. She advanced with a
+steady, slow step, her eyes firmly fixed on Dr. Santley's face. She
+did not glance at Paulton. She did not glance at the couch.
+
+"You were long," she said, in a slow, constrained voice, "and I came
+in to know."
+
+She rested the tips of the fingers of one hand on the table and kept
+her eyes fixed on the doctor.
+
+"I think," said Santley, placing himself between her and the couch,
+"that it would be better if we went into some other room."
+
+"We cannot; this must serve. All the other rooms are locked up,
+except my bed room, and my husband has the keys."
+
+Her voice did not falter.
+
+"Has Mr. ----, your husband, been long ill?"
+
+"My husband's name is Louis Davenport. He has been ill a long
+time--years. He has been suffering from spasmodic asthma. I can
+gather from your manner that there is no hope."
+
+Her voice was firm and clear. No feature moved but the beautiful,
+flexible mouth, of which the lips were as full of colour as ever.
+
+"May I beg of you to be seated?" Dr. Santley left the position he had
+occupied and handed her a chair. She sank on it without speaking. She
+rested one of her arms on the table. He went on: "Mrs. Davenport, I
+am afraid the worst must be faced."
+
+"The worst!" she cried, rising and looking wildly at him, her voice
+now coming in a terrified whisper from between her lips, which at the
+moment lost their colour. "The worst! What do you mean by the worst?
+What do you know of the worst?"
+
+Her face showed intense eagerness, mingled with intense fear.
+
+"I am very sorry to be obliged to give you bad news."
+
+"And it is?" with still greater eagerness and fear.
+
+"That Mr. Davenport will not recover."
+
+"That he is dead?" leaning forward on the back of her chair towards
+him.
+
+"Unhappily, yes."
+
+"Of his old disease?"
+
+She still kept her eyes on Santley's face.
+
+"Perhaps. Did he complain to-night?"
+
+"Yes; he said he was too ill to think of lying down."
+
+"He used, no doubt, to inhale chloroform when the spasms were bad?"
+
+"Always."
+
+"Yes, I got the smell of chloroform. Well, one of these spasms may
+have been too severe; and now you know the worst, Mrs. Davenport."
+
+She sat down on her chair and seemed about to faint. There was wine
+on the table. Santley poured some into a glass and made her drink it.
+After a while she became composed, and the look of eagerness and
+dread disappeared wholly from her face, and the red returned to her
+lips.
+
+She was the first to speak. Her voice had regained all its old, firm
+serenity. Her face was calm and commanding. She looked, once more as
+though neither the onslaught of battle nor the wreck of worlds could
+disturb her.
+
+"You, sir," she said, once more addressing Santley, "I have to thank
+for your promptness in coming at this hour to one whom you never even
+heard of before. And"--turning to Paulton--"I have to thank you most
+sincerely for your kindness in summoning the doctor for me in my
+extremity."
+
+Each man protested he had in this matter done no more than his duty,
+and both said they sympathised with her in the awful calamity which
+had fallen upon her.
+
+She bowed her head in acknowledgment of their kind-hearted speeches,
+and went on:
+
+"I am, I may say, alone in the world and without a friend in London.
+I am now, or shall be when you go, alone in this house. I do not know
+what is to be done in a case of this kind. For a long time I have
+been aware my husband might die at any moment. But now that this has
+happened, I find myself as unprepared for it as though the
+possibility of his death had never before entered my mind. I would
+therefore ask you to add to the favours you have already conferred by
+telling me what I ought to do in the morning."
+
+She spoke in the most measured and deliberate way. It was plain she
+did not want to excite compassion. Her manner went so far as to imply
+that she would resent expressions of condolence. She seemed to wish
+the two men would regard her simply as an inexperienced woman
+confronted by an unexpected difficulty, and that they would confine
+themselves to the business aspect of the affair.
+
+Santley and Paulton looked at one another inquiringly.
+
+"It will be impossible for you to stay by yourself in this house
+to-night," said Paulton, who was completely subjugated by her regal
+beauty, her sudden misfortune, and her forlorn plight.
+
+"But what am I to do?" she asked, turning to him. "It is too late or
+too early to look for ordinary help; and if I could get a person to
+come and stay with me, this place is not fit to receive any one."
+
+Paulton was overwhelmed by this speech and the contemplation of the
+scene before him. Here was the most superb woman he had ever seen in
+his life alone in this house of chaos by night with the dead body of
+her husband, who had spoken to her but a few hours ago. She could not
+live here by herself till daylight. It would drive her mad, or would
+kill her. It would be little short of murder to leave her as she was.
+He could see plainly that her present calmness was artificial, and
+that when the need for self-restraint caused by the presence of two
+strangers was removed, she would break down utterly, collapse--in all
+likelihood die. He knew that when highly strung natures break down at
+all they break down more completely than any others. Then he knew
+that his father and mother were the most kind-hearted and neighbourly
+people alive, and that if they only heard of the hideous position in
+which this woman was, they would hasten to her assistance. No doubt
+the hour--it must now be past two--was most awkward; but if it was
+awkward for the succourer, how much more awkward for any one in need
+of help.
+
+All this ran through his mind in a moment. He resolved to act; then
+he spoke:
+
+"Mrs. Davenport, my father and mother live close by, only a few
+houses off. I am sure they will be greatly pleased and take it as a
+kindness if you will come up there to-night. I could send down the
+coachman to stay here. He is a most good-natured and trustworthy
+man."
+
+Dr. Santley gave Paulton a peculiar look, of which the latter could
+make nothing.
+
+"What!" she said. "At such an hour! I could not think of it."
+
+"I can assure you," persisted Paulton, "it will not cause any
+inconvenience. My mother does not in the least mind getting up. I am
+perfectly certain both my father and mother would be greatly
+displeased with me if I did not do everything in my power to induce
+you to come."
+
+He glanced at Santley for encouragement, and again found the
+incomprehensible expression on the doctor's face.
+
+She seemed to hesitate. She looked down at her soft, round arm lying
+on the table.
+
+"It is most considerate of you to make me such an offer, and if I
+felt perfectly sure your mother would not regard it as a very
+inconvenient intrusion, I should be disposed to accept it."
+
+"Believe me, Mrs. Davenport, I am not exaggerating in the slightest
+degree when I say that my mother would be displeased with me if I
+omitted any argument likely to influence you. I appeal to Dr.
+Santley. He will tell you that my mother is most sympathetic. What do
+you say, doctor?"
+
+"I am sure I know of no one of kindlier nature than Mrs. Paulton,"
+said the doctor.
+
+The face of Santley was now expressionless, the eyes of Mrs.
+Davenport were fixed on him.
+
+"I will go," she said, and rose. She walked slowly down the side of
+the table until she reached the elbow of the couch. She bent over the
+drooped head, kissed the forward-leaning forehead, and then went back
+to the door, and as she left the room said: "I shall be ready
+immediately. I do not like to go upstairs. I have a cloak and bonnet
+in the hall. Please bring the light here a moment."
+
+"Will you wait until I come back?" said Paulton to Santley,
+as he passed him by carrying the lamp. "I will not be more than
+half-an-hour."
+
+"I'll wait for you," said the doctor.
+
+In a few seconds Paulton replaced the lamp on the table, and then
+Mrs. Davenport and he left the house.
+
+As soon as the sound of their footfalls had died away, the doctor
+once more approached the recumbent figure.
+
+"I wish," he thought, "Paulton had not been so enthusiastic in his
+invitation. As a rule, spasmodic asthma does not kill directly. A
+little chloroform is not a bad thing in spasmodic asthma; but too
+much chloroform is a bad thing, and there has been too much here.
+Why, it's all over the beard, and shirt, and waistcoat! She looks as
+if she could do anything. I hope this is not a case of foul play."
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER III.
+
+                       HINTS OF EARLY HISTORY.
+
+
+Alfred Paulton had not said too much of the kindliness of his father
+and mother. He left Mrs. Davenport in the drawing-room and knocked at
+his mother's door, and explained to both father and mother what had
+occurred, and the step he had taken in the matter. After expressions
+of surprise and horror at the tragedy at Crescent House, both
+applauded his action. Mrs. Paulton then told him to go down to the
+guest and say that she would follow him in a few minutes.
+
+When he got back to the drawing-room he found the widow where he had
+left her. She was sitting in an easy-chair, her elbow resting on a
+table, her head on her hand. She raised her head as he entered.
+Otherwise she did not move.
+
+"My mother is delighted you have come," he said. "She will be here in
+a few minutes. I see the fire has gone out. I hope you do not feel
+the place very cold?"
+
+She looked at him with a stony stare. Her brows were slightly raised,
+but around her eyes the lids were strangely contracted. The
+expression of the whole face was that of one who suffered pain, but
+was not giving attention to the pain. When she spoke, her voice was
+dry and hard.
+
+"It is most kind of your mother to interest and trouble herself about
+a perfect stranger. I do not feel cold, thank you."
+
+The contraction round the eyes relaxed. A look of intelligence
+alarmed came into her eyes, and she asked, in a husky voice:
+
+"Do you know anything of cases such as this? I mean, do you know
+anything of the law in such cases?"
+
+"The law!" he said, "the law! In what way do you mean?"
+
+"Oh," she cried, covering her face with her hands, "it is dreadful to
+think of--horrible! Can you not tell me," she pleaded, "if--if it
+will be necessary to have an----"
+
+She paused and looked at him beseechingly.
+
+"An inquest?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Certainly not," he answered promptly. With this beautiful woman
+before him it was shocking to think of the ordeal and details of an
+inquest. "Mr. Davenport was suffering from a disease of long
+standing; it had been particularly bad to-night, and a violent
+paroxysm overcame him. My friend, Dr. Santley, will make it right,
+and you will be spared all pain that can possibly be diverted from
+you."
+
+"Thank you," she said, feebly; and she threw herself back in her
+chair.
+
+Nothing further was said until Mrs. Paulton entered the room. The
+young man introduced Mrs. Davenport to his mother; then he left to
+rouse the coachman for the purpose of sitting up at Crescent House.
+As soon as Paulton had arranged this, he hastened back to Dr.
+Santley.
+
+"I came as quickly as I could, doctor. That poor woman is in a
+dreadful state of mind; she looks to me as if she were losing her
+reason."
+
+"H'm," said the doctor, who was sitting on a chair by the lamp on the
+table, and had been reading a newspaper he had happened to have in
+his pocket. He seemed thoughtful or sleepy; Paulton was not a man of
+nice observation.
+
+"Poor thing!" said the latter, compassionately; "she is not only in
+great grief for the loss of her husband, but was very uneasy about
+the suddenness of his death."
+
+"No wonder," said the doctor drily.
+
+The younger man sat down on a chair and regarded his companion with
+surprise. He had known the other for years, and had always taken him
+for a simple, sympathetic man. His tone now was one of cynical
+distrust, although distrust of what Paulton could not even guess. He
+leant forward and peered into Santley's face.
+
+"I told her to make her mind quite easy on the score of the future.
+You understand what I mean?"
+
+"She does not want an inquest?"
+
+"Precisely."
+
+"That is unfortunate, for I will not certify."
+
+"What!" cried Paulton, leaning still farther forward, "you will not
+certify as to the cause of death? What do you mean?"
+
+He shivered, and looked apprehensively at the body reclining on the
+couch.
+
+"I don't know what the cause of death was."
+
+"She said spasmodic asthma."
+
+"A disease that very, very rarely kills."
+
+"I thought that, on the contrary, it was most fatal."
+
+"No. In a paroxysm of coughing, something in the head or chest may
+give way, but asthma itself does not kill."
+
+An uneasy expression came into the young man's face, and, looking
+straight into the doctor's eyes, he said:
+
+"And in this case what do you think killed?"
+
+"It is impossible to say until after the inquest. I found on the
+floor this"--he held a bottle up in his hand. "It is a two-ounce
+bottle, empty; it contained chloroform. There is chloroform spilt all
+over the beard, shirt, and waistcoat."
+
+"But perhaps the chloroform was administered for the relief of the
+dead man?"
+
+"Perhaps so," said Santley, rising; "we shall find out all at
+the inquest. I'm off to bed now. Let nothing be stirred here.
+Good-night."
+
+As Dr. Santley turned away from the gate of Crescent House, Paulton's
+coachman came up and the young man was relieved. He walked home
+straight and went to bed.
+
+It was past four by this time, and after the excitement of the night
+there was little chance of the young man closing his eyes. His life
+up to this had been barren of adventure, and here was he now plunged
+into the middle of an affair which would be town talk in twenty-four
+hours. It was quite plain to him, from Santley's manner, that the
+latter did not think the man had died a natural death, and it was
+almost as plain he did not think it was a case of accidental
+poisoning or suicide. Gradually, as time went by, it seemed to narrow
+itself down to one question: Did or did not that superb woman----?
+But no; the mere question was a hideous libel! He wished he could go
+to sleep; but sleep would not come. He tossed and tumbled until he
+felt feverish. In the heat and hurry of events a few hours old he had
+not had time for thought; now he had time for thought, but he did not
+want to think. True, he had no personal interest in that silent room
+out of which he had stepped a little while ago, but it haunted him,
+and lay before his imagination, lighted up with a fierce light which
+made every object in it stand out with painful sharpness.
+
+While the actions of which he had been a spectator were going on at
+Crescent House, all had been confusion, chaos. Now every object was
+firmly defined by a hard, rigid line; every sound had a metallic
+ring; every motion went forward with mathematical deliberateness and
+precision. And over this scene of rigid forms and circumspect
+movement presided the woman, whose dark and lofty beauty had filled
+him with amazed reverence.
+
+Murder! Could it be that murder had been done? There could be no
+doubt Santley thought so. Murder done by whom? Ugh! How he wished he
+had had nothing to do with that house; and yet, it was a privilege
+even to have seen her, to have heard her voice, to have done her a
+slight service. Above all, it was consoling to think she was now
+under this roof. If a fool knew how his thoughts were running now,
+that fool might think he was in love with this woman. In love!
+Monstrous! He would as soon think of falling in love with a sunset, a
+melody, a poem.
+
+Oh, if he could only sleep! Why should he trouble himself about this
+matter? Santley said there would be an inquest. That would be trouble
+enough for him in all conscience. He, of course, would have to
+appear, although he scarcely knew how his evidence could be material.
+
+It must be near six o'clock now. There was no good in staying in bed
+any longer; he would get up and go out for a walk. It was dawn, he
+felt feverish, and the air would refresh him.
+
+He set off at a quick pace. The breeze was raw and cold. He felt
+physically invigorated, but his mental unrest had not abated. Do what
+he would he could not banish the scene of the night from his mind--he
+could not get rid of the awful suspicion Santley's words had given
+rise to. Over and over he told himself that even the doctor had not
+explicitly formulated that suspicion. Over and over again that
+suspicion would intrude upon his thoughts.
+
+He did not return to the house until breakfast-time. At the
+suggestion of Mrs. Paulton, Mrs. Davenport was breakfasting in her
+own room, as she was tired and shaken. Alfred had to go over the
+whole story once more for his father, but he was careful not to say a
+word of the terrible hint thrown out by Santley.
+
+The moment breakfast was over he left home, and, without having made
+up his mind as to whither he was going, found himself in front of
+Santley's house just as the doctor was stepping into his brougham
+bound for his morning visits.
+
+"I say, doctor," he said, getting up close to the other, "what you
+let fall about that unfortunate affair at Crescent House kept me
+awake all night. You really don't think there has been anything
+wrong?"
+
+Santley shook his head gravely as he got into his brougham, saying:
+
+"I don't know, Mr. Paulton; I can't say. But I am sorry you mixed
+yourself up with the affair more than was absolutely necessary."
+
+This was but poor comfort to the young man. He found it impossible to
+believe any evil of that marvellous-looking woman. If there was
+anything in what Santley said it plainly pointed at her; for were not
+she and her husband the only people in the house?
+
+He did not care to go home. He could not meet that woman while even
+the hint of such a suspicion was in his head. He did not suspect her;
+but the suspicion had been spoken to him, it was sounding in his
+ears, and he could not bring himself to stand face to face with her
+and hear that murmur. He told himself this was an absurd condition of
+mind; but he could not help it. What was she to him, or he to her,
+that he should thus give way to such feelings? She was a beautiful, a
+surprisingly beautiful woman to whom he had rendered a slight
+service, shown a little kindness. That was all.
+
+He wandered aimlessly about for an hour, and finally went into town.
+Dulwich was intolerable to him. At Victoria railway station he took a
+hansom and drove to the Robin Hood Club. It was now between eleven
+and twelve. The club had not been long open, and there were only
+three members in the place. One of these happened to be Jerry
+O'Brien, a young Irishman, an intimate friend of Paulton, reputed to
+be clever, and known to be indolent. To him Paulton told the story of
+Crescent House, and what Dr. Santley had hinted at.
+
+Up to this Jerry O'Brien had given little close attention to the
+story. He was smoking in a huge easy-chair with eyes half shut. The
+idea that a woman had poisoned her husband roused even him to
+attention, and as Paulton had finished his story he began to ask
+questions.
+
+"And so this doctor of yours won't certify to the cause of death, and
+thinks your goddess may have had a hand in it!"
+
+"Yes. Isn't it horrible?"
+
+"What is your goddess like?"
+
+"Dark and most lovely. A noble kind of beauty."
+
+"Good figure?"
+
+"Perfect."
+
+"Did you hear her name?"
+
+"Yes; Davenport."
+
+Jerry O'Brien blew the smoke of his cigar away with a whistle.
+
+"Is she English?"
+
+"No. I think Scotch."
+
+"Possibly Irish?"
+
+"Ay, she may be Irish."
+
+"And her husband was an elderly man, with a greyish full beard and
+chronic asthma?"
+
+"Yes. Do you know them?"
+
+"By heavens, I do! And I think I know, if there has been foul play,
+who cheated."
+
+"Who? Not she?"
+
+"Not she directly, any way, but Tom Blake, the biggest scoundrel
+Ireland has turned out for years and years, and an old lover of hers.
+I saw him in Piccadilly to-day. He looked as if he was meditating
+murder. Poor old Davenport!--I knew him well. He was a simple man.
+She must have told Blake of the lonely house. Your doctor is right.
+There is reason for suspicion, and I'll be at the inquest. You will,
+of course?"
+
+"Unfortunately, yes."
+
+"Then I promise you will hear an interesting story."
+
+Paulton shuddered.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER IV.
+
+                            SEEKING HELP.
+
+
+Young Paulton felt anything but relieved or cheered by Jerry
+O'Brien's words. He began now to feel it would have been wiser if he
+had not meddled in this affair. It was quite true his father and
+mother were the kindest couple in England; but, like most other
+middle-class elderly people, they were careful about appearances and
+preferred a smooth and easy way of life to one of surprises and
+startling situations.
+
+And now were they--owing to his hasty action of the night
+before--brought into immediate contact with an inquest and a story,
+which might turn out to be a scandal, which might have for its core
+an infamous crime. This other man, this Blake, of whom Jerry O'Brien
+spoke in such unmeasured terms, might, if he appeared upon the stage,
+complicate matters infinitely.
+
+Besides, although he had taken elaborate care to tell himself he was
+in no danger of falling in love with Mrs. Davenport, that did not
+make it desirable a former and disreputable admirer should be in the
+neighbourhood. But, after all, Jerry O'Brien's surmises might be
+quite baseless. This old admirer might have ceased to admire--might
+never in all his life have been within miles of Half Moon Lane, the
+Crescent House.
+
+At present what was he to do with himself? There was a kind of
+treason in leaving all the burden of the situation on the shoulders
+of his father and mother. He did not know anything about inquests
+beyond what he had gathered now and then from reading a summarised
+report in a newspaper. If it was mean to keep away from his father
+and mother, what could he think of leaving this newly-made widow
+derelict? And yet what about this old lover? Confound the whole
+thing! Now he was heartily sorry he had bound himself up in it.
+
+And yet when he thought of her he charged himself with cowardice for
+flinching.
+
+"Look here, O'Brien," he said at length, "what ought I to do?"
+
+"Do!" cried O'Brien scornfully; "why, get out of it as fast as ever
+you can. I hope you're not such a fool as to mix yourself and your
+family any more up in this miserable matter."
+
+Alfred shook his head gravely.
+
+"I can't retreat now. I have promised to see her out of the
+trouble----"
+
+"And a pretty chance you have of seeing her out of the trouble! My
+belief is that every hour will make matters only worse."
+
+"Do be reasonable and try and help me. You know I would depend on you
+more than on any other man living. I can't go home and turn this
+woman out of doors, and you ought to be able to understand that I
+don't like to confess to the old people I have been hasty or unwise.
+Don't desert me, O'Brien."
+
+The other got out of his chair with a growl, and began pacing up and
+down the smoking-room of the club. O'Brien had private reasons of his
+own for wishing to keep friendly with Alfred Paulton. Jerry knew no
+pleasanter house in all London to spend a long evening in than the
+Paultons', and he knew no nicer girl in all London than Madge
+Paulton, Alfred's younger sister. But these facts were both reasons
+for his impatience with his friend. He felt a firm conviction the
+adventure of the night before would have no gratifying sequel. The
+sight of Tom Blake, taken in conjunction with Paulton's story, was
+enough to make any prudent man cautious. And here now was Alfred,
+plunged headlong into one of the most disagreeable experiences which
+could befall a quiet-going citizen. It was too bad, but there was no
+cure for the thing. It would certainly be rather mean of Alfred to
+retire from the position in which he had voluntarily placed himself
+with this woman. O'Brien could not abandon his friend any more than
+his friend could abandon this woman.
+
+He stopped in his walk, and said, abruptly:
+
+"The first thing is to get a solicitor. Do you know of one?"
+
+"There's Spencer, my own man, or there's my father's."
+
+"And a nice pair they'd make in a case of this kind. Your father's
+man wouldn't touch it with a forty-foot ladder, and Spencer would get
+every one connected with the matter locked up. No, you want a man
+that's accustomed to the work. He must be as sharp as bayonets and as
+persevering. I would not attach so much importance to this point,
+only that I know Tom Blake is about. I feel you are standing on a
+mine, and may be blown sky-high any moment. I have it! You must get
+Pringle--Pringle, of Pringle, Pringle, and Co. Young Pringle is the
+very man for you, and he's a good sort too. Come on, and I'll
+introduce you to him."
+
+The two friends left the club and proceeded at once to the office of
+Pringle, Pringle, and Co. Here they were fortunate in finding the
+younger Pringle, and at their service.
+
+He was a low-sized, stoutish, horsey-looking, clean-shaven man of
+about thirty-five, in very tight-fitting clothes. He bade the two
+visitors be seated, and then listened with exemplary patience to
+Paulton's story. When it was finished, he crossed his legs and
+reflected for a few moments.
+
+"I see," he said--"I see. Supposing Mrs. Davenport is willing I
+should appear for her, I think all will be right. Of course, it would
+be nonsense to pretend to believe that a thing of this kind is
+agreeable. It is not. Things of this kind are awkward and painful;
+but that is all. I feel fully persuaded, beyond the inconvenience of
+appearing as a witness, Mrs. Davenport will suffer none. Your doctor
+must be mad, I should say, Mr. Paulton. You don't think he could be
+induced to certify?"
+
+"I am perfectly sure he won't. I have known him some years, and he is
+a man of great determination," said Paulton.
+
+"Well, we must only try and do the best we can. Has the deceased any
+relatives--blood relatives, I mean?"
+
+"I don't know," said Paulton.
+
+"Yes, he has a brother, who lives in the south of Ireland," answered
+O'Brien. "Mr. Davenport was somewhat peculiar in his thoughts and
+habits, but his brother is an oddity."
+
+"Ah, that is not fortunate. No doubt he will want to know all about
+this unlucky affair.
+
+"And now, O'Brien, it is your turn. I want you to tell me all you
+know about this other man, Blake."
+
+"Well, I'll tell you all I know about the whole thing," said Jerry
+O'Brien.
+
+"Ay, do," said the solicitor, settling himself comfortably in his
+elbow chair.
+
+"The man who is dead, Louis Davenport, was a native of the
+south of Ireland, County Waterford, to be exact. His wife is about
+thirty-four, and he must have been about sixty when he died. She,
+too, is Irish; her maiden name was Butler. She comes of a good Cork
+family--the Butlers of Scrouthea. They were as poor as church mice.
+Davenport was rich, and had money, not land; and Marion Butler was a
+beauty, as my friend Paulton has told you.
+
+"About ten years ago, when Louis Davenport was elderly, and Marion
+Butler no longer very young, he proposed to her father for her. The
+father was delighted, for Davenport promised all sorts of comfortable
+things about money; but when the matter was spoken of to Miss Butler,
+they found a difficulty had to be faced, for Mr. Tom Blake stood in
+the way.
+
+"This Tom Blake is and was one of the most hopeless scamps in Europe.
+He is now about thirty-eight years of age, and has deserved hanging
+for every year of his life. He was in the army, to start with; he was
+kicked out of it. He tried the Turf for a while, until he was kicked
+out of that too. Then he turned his hand to card-sharping. What he's
+doing now, I don't know, except he may have gone in for a little
+murder. He's quite capable of it, I assure you, Pringle--quite
+capable of it."
+
+"And you say this Miss Butler had a strong predilection for this
+objectionable man?"
+
+"It amounted to nothing short of infatuation. As the account of the
+matter reached me, she was assured by people who were quite
+disinterested that he was a thorough scamp. They might as well have
+saved their breath. She would listen to all they had to say, and
+simply shake her head."
+
+"And how did they in the end over come this infatuation?"
+
+"They never overcame it at all. They got her to marry Davenport by
+appealing to the baseness of Blake's nature. Some friends of mine
+were very intimate with the Butlers at that time, and I heard the
+whole history of his abominable conduct. He was then in great
+extremities for money, and took a sum down to leave the country and
+hold no communication with her. That's the sort of man Tom Blake is."
+
+"But surely this woman whom he treated so vilely cannot care for him
+still--cannot have any regard for such a scurvy knave?"
+
+"I don't know how matters have gone of late. I have been out of their
+tracks for some time. If he has any influence now it may rest on
+fear, not fascination. I am quite sure if there is anything wrong, he
+is at the bottom of it. I have been in London for months now, and
+never saw him or heard of him. Is it a mere coincidence that I should
+come across him just as I hear this story from Paulton?"
+
+"It is strange. I presume Mrs. Davenport is childless?"
+
+"Yes. And as far as I know she is now absolutely alone in the world,
+if you do not count this brother-in-law, with whom she never got on
+well."
+
+"I'll go out to Dulwich with you myself now. I think that will be the
+best thing."
+
+The three men rose and walked to Ludgate Hill railway station.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER V.
+
+                         PRINGLE UNANSWERED.
+
+
+When the three men arrived at Dulwich, they went straight to
+Carlingford House, where Mr. Paulton lived. The owner was in. Some
+years ago he had retired from business in the City, and now
+interested himself in local affairs, his garden, his horses, and
+reading. He was bluff, white-haired, stout, brief of speech,
+straightforward, kindly. He was not quite sixty yet, notwithstanding
+his white hair.
+
+Just as they got into the house he was crossing the hall. He paused,
+and held out his hand cordially to Jerry O'Brien.
+
+"What lucky wind has blown you here at such an hour?" he cried. "You
+are just too late for luncheon; but I dare say they'll be able to
+find something for you and Alfred, and----"
+
+He now became aware the third man was a stranger, and stopped.
+
+Young Paulton introduced the solicitor, and then all four went into a
+little library on the right hand side of the hall. Alfred felt
+acutely the difficulty of his position, and he found himself
+completely at a loss to explain the situation to his father. Then it
+occurred to him to appeal to O'Brien for help.
+
+"Jerry," said he, "tell the governor all about it."
+
+The old man looked apprehensively from one to the other. There was
+evidently something wrong.
+
+"Out with it whatever it is, my lad," said he to O'Brien, and,
+without further delay, Jerry began. When he had finished, the old man
+seemed thunderstruck. It was incredible that he should ever be
+brought into contact with such people, and such a history. He had sat
+down in an easy-chair, and now he felt he had not the strength to get
+out of it. He looked blankly around at the three figures and the
+bookcases and the walls, as if he were awaiting contradiction from
+animate or inanimate objects. But no one spoke, and nothing occurred
+to reassure him.
+
+At last the solicitor came forward with, "You know, sir, we have
+really nothing whatever to go on yet. Dr. Santley's dissatisfaction
+and the lady's shrinking from an inquiry, and the presence of this
+man Blake in London may all point to nothing--end in nothing. I have
+come out here to clear up the whole thing, and I have no doubt that
+if I might be favoured with half-an-hour's conversation with Mrs.
+Davenport all our uneasiness would disappear."
+
+A look of hope came into Mr. Paulton's face. He rose, and,
+approaching the solicitor, said: "I wish you would see her and bring
+us good news. She is keeping her room, but I think she will come down
+to the drawing-room if Mrs. Paulton asks her. You would greatly
+oblige me if you would see her. I wouldn't be mixed up with a case of
+that kind for any consideration."
+
+"I shall be only too happy to do anything I can in your interest,
+which is, I presume, identical with that of the afflicted lady. The
+first step to be taken is to ascertain through Mrs. Paulton if Mrs.
+Davenport will see me."
+
+"I'll go immediately." Mr. Paulton moved towards the door.
+
+"A moment, sir. Don't you think that if Mrs. Davenport will see me it
+would be as well Mrs. Paulton said a few words of preparation. Such
+as, for instance, that in cases of this kind it was always desirable
+to have advice, and to allow some one to act instead of the
+principal; as owing to the distress attendant on loss one is little
+able to look after matters of detail. If Mrs. Paulton would be good
+enough she might say that you thought I might be of some slight use.
+Anything of that kind Mrs. Paulton might say would prevent my coming
+too suddenly on the widow."
+
+"Quite so. I am glad you mentioned it. I shall do exactly as you
+suggest. I shall be back as soon as I can." He hurried out of the
+room.
+
+In less than a quarter of an hour he returned, rubbing his hands. It
+was plain by his appearance that he had been successful. Yes; Mrs.
+Davenport was in the drawing-room, and would see Mr. Pringle.
+
+He went up, was introduced by Mrs. Paulton, who then retired, leaving
+client and lawyer together.
+
+The lady had sent up to Crescent House for a change of clothes, and
+now appeared in a plain, black dress, with sleeves of ordinary
+length, and without the orange scarf or the diamonds at her throat or
+girdle. She motioned him to a seat, and then took one herself.
+
+What Alfred said had prepared him for something out of the common,
+but for nothing like what he now saw. He was prepared to meet a
+beautiful woman in need of his help--he found a regal woman who might
+perhaps condescend to give him orders. Her face was absolutely
+without colour, save the full red lips, the dark impenetrable eyes,
+and the black eyebrows. But the modelling of the face was superb, and
+the carriage of the head magnificent. And yet he was conscious of
+something that detracted from, or contradicted the imperial grandeur
+of the head. There was no splendour in the pose of the figure. In the
+arms, and figure, and gait, there was an air of patient, suppliant
+dutifulness, that seemed to plead for love and protection.
+
+"Mrs. Paulton has explained to me," she said, in a low, soft voice,
+"that it is better I should have some one to advise me in the present
+circumstances, and that you have been good enough, Mr. Pringle, to
+allow me to look to you for the help I need."
+
+She spoke with great precision and delicacy of tone. It was a
+flattery to hear her utter one's name.
+
+He answered in a low voice. His voice never before seemed so harsh in
+his own ears. "It is well for you to have advice. You may rely upon
+my doing all I can for you."
+
+It was simply monstrous to associate this woman with the idea of
+crime. Attorney and man of the world though he was, he could not be
+persuaded into such a ridiculous belief. O'Brien must be a fool. Or
+no, it wasn't O'Brien--it was Paulton's doctor who had the honour of
+broaching that absurdity.
+
+"I am quite sure of that. And the first thing I want to ask you about
+is, when I shall need your advice?--for I know absolutely nothing
+about such things. Mr. Davenport has a brother living; I suppose he
+had better be telegraphed for?"
+
+"Yes. He must be telegraphed for at once."
+
+"Then I suppose the--funeral must be arranged for immediately?"
+
+"Yes. Then, as you are aware, a few legal formalities have to be gone
+through before that."
+
+"What are they?"
+
+"Have you not been told?"
+
+"No. Pray tell me."
+
+"Well, the sad event took place so suddenly that a certain form has
+to be observed. In this case it will be the merest form."
+
+"Some sort of certificate has to be got, I dare say?"
+
+"Well, yes; if you put it in that way."
+
+"And what must I do?"
+
+"You say you know nothing of such matters as we are now talking
+about. The first advice I have to give you is, that you must repose
+full confidence in me. Remember, I am bound by a rule of my
+profession to respect any confidence you may place in me. I shall
+have to ask you questions which would be impertinent from any one but
+your legal adviser. Mind, all this is merely to save you annoyance
+hereafter. Will you trust me with the history of last night?"
+
+"I will--as far as I may," faintly.
+
+"I have heard something of last night. I will not trouble you with
+any inquiries that I do not consider absolutely necessary. You and
+Mr. Davenport arrived together yesterday evening, and came on to your
+new house close by, your furniture having preceded you by only a few
+hours, so that the house was all in disorder?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And you came unaccompanied by any servant; may I ask you why was
+this?"
+
+"Mr. Davenport had peculiar notions about never moving servants from
+one house to another. He insisted on getting new servants when we
+changed."
+
+"So that it was at his desire you came unattended?"
+
+"Certainly. Only it was too late when we arrived, we should have got
+some one to help us."
+
+"And was Mr. Davenport in his usual health when you reached Crescent
+House?"
+
+"No. His asthma was worse, but not very much worse. When it was bad
+he could not lie down. My room was the only one in order, and he said
+he would rest on the couch for the night. I left him at about eleven,
+but did not go to bed, as I was not quite easy about him, and thought
+I'd come down and put some coal on the fire later. I fell asleep in a
+chair, and when I went down I found all was over."
+
+"He had a large quantity of chloroform by him?"
+
+"Yes; a two-ounce bottle, almost full."
+
+"And he was in the habit of using chloroform when the spasms were
+bad?"
+
+"Yes; but what do you mean? You are perplexing and terrifying me.
+Pray speak plainly to me."
+
+"I shall very soon be done. Remember, I told you I should ask no
+question that was not absolutely essential. Now, from the time you
+and Mr. Davenport entered that house, and until Mr. Paulton and the
+doctor entered it, had any other person access to it?"
+
+She grasped the edge of the table near her. She trembled as in an
+ague. Her lips grew as pallid as her brow. She did not speak.
+
+"Remember, anything you communicate is privileged, and will not find
+its way abroad through me. I am trying to get the means of protecting
+you. Of course you are fully at liberty to refuse to answer me now;
+but all questions will have to be answered at the inquest."
+
+"Inquest!" she whispered, in a voice of abject terror. She rose to
+her feet and stood swaying to and fro, one hand still grasping the
+table. "Inquest! Mr. Paulton said there would be no inquest. There
+_shall_ be no inquest."
+
+"The bottle was found _empty_."
+
+"Oh, Heaven, take away my life from me!"
+
+"Was Blake in the house that night?"
+
+She took her hand from the table and stood still a moment, looking
+upward. Then slowly she raised both her arms aloft, and cried:
+
+"Hear Thou my prayer!"
+
+She stood a while motionless. After a moment she said, in a firm
+voice:
+
+"No mercy!"
+
+She dropped her arms to her side, bowed slowly to him, and then with
+erect head and a firm step walked out of the room.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VI.
+
+                         HER SUDDEN RESOLVE.
+
+
+For some time after Mrs. Davenport left the drawing-room, young
+Pringle stood motionless, with his hand resting on the back of a
+chair. The scene had taken him completely by surprise. At the
+beginning of it he had made up his mind, or rather his emotions had
+so wrought upon him, he determined she had no reprehensible
+connection with the event of the night before.
+
+He had implored her to confide in him, and she had given him her
+confidence up to a certain point. Then she not only refused to trust
+him any more, but behaved in such an extraordinary way as to lay
+herself open to the gravest suspicions. If she had at the end of
+their interview fallen down in a faint, he could have formed an
+opinion of the case--an opinion which would not have been very
+favourable to her, but still something definite. But the manner of
+her leaving the room seemed to throw a new light, or rather cast a
+new kind of shadow on the case.
+
+He had better go down at once and inform Mr. Paulton of what had
+occurred.
+
+He left the drawing-room and returned to the library. In as few words
+as possible he told the owner of the house that he feared there was
+no chance of avoiding the unpleasantness of an inquest. Mr. Paulton
+then asked what the lady had said, but Pringle explained he could not
+divulge it. He made no comment whatever.
+
+The old man breathed heavily, and looked about helplessly when the
+solicitor had finished.
+
+The two young men returned his look, but there was no comforting
+assurance in their gaze.
+
+Alfred Paulton was now profoundly impressed with a sense of the
+unpleasantness into which he had drawn the whole family.
+
+"I am very sorry, sir," said he, addressing his father, "that I have
+been the cause of all this worry. Of course I had not the least idea
+last night that anything of this kind was likely to arise. If I had,
+I should never have acted as I did."
+
+"It is most unfortunate," said the father.
+
+"Well," broke in Jerry O'Brien, "there's no use now in crying over
+spilt milk. What we have to ask ourselves is: How can it be best
+faced--eh, Pringle? Isn't that the practical question?"
+
+"I think so," said the solicitor. "For my part I find myself in
+rather an awkward position. Mrs. Davenport's interests and yours, Mr.
+Paulton, can scarcely be said to be any longer identical. I cannot
+advise both. Besides, Mr. Paulton, you have a solicitor of your own.
+My position is uncomfortable--scarcely professional."
+
+"My father's solicitor would be little or no use in this case, Mr.
+Pringle," said Alfred. "That is the reason we came to you."
+
+"Mr. Pringle," said the father, "pray do not throw us over. If you
+do, I shall not know where to turn. Can you not show us any way out
+of this unhappy situation?"
+
+"Of course," said Pringle, "you must put up with the consequences of
+facts up to this moment. What I suppose you to be asking me is--How
+can further consequences be avoided, or can they be avoided at all?"
+
+"Precisely," said Mr. Paulton. "Can they be avoided at all?--and if
+so, how?"
+
+"Well, as you offered the hospitality of your roof to Mrs. Davenport,
+and she has accepted it, you can't say to her, or even show to her,
+that you wish her to go----"
+
+"Quite impossible," interrupted Alfred.
+
+"But might I not say--that supposing she will see me again--a thing I
+doubt very much--it would be most desirable for her to move into
+town, so that she might be near me and I near her?"
+
+"That would not be a bad plan," said Mr. Paulton, looking at his son
+and O'Brien for confirmation. "What do you think, boys?"
+
+"I don't see what better can be done," said O'Brien, answering for
+the two.
+
+He answered quickly, for he was half afraid that Alfred had not even
+yet made up his mind as to the desirability of her leaving the house.
+
+"The great difficulty is that time is short, and I don't think I
+could intrude upon her again to-day. We had quite a scene upstairs.
+Judging from the state of agitation in which she left me, I should
+imagine she will not see any one on business during the remainder of
+the day."
+
+At that moment the door of the library opened and Mrs. Davenport
+stepped into the room. She was in her walking dress.
+
+All the men rose and stood looking at her silently. Mr. Paulton was
+the first to recover his presence of mind, and offered her a chair.
+
+She came over quietly to where he stood, bowing slightly as she
+moved.
+
+"I hope I do not disturb you, gentlemen," she said, in a gentle voice
+and with a wan smile.
+
+"Not in the least," said Mr. Paulton. "Will you not take a chair?"
+
+"Thank you, no. I am going out."
+
+"Going out! May not some one go for you--one of my daughters or one
+of the servants?"
+
+"You are very good; but I must go myself. I have just been explaining
+to Mrs. Paulton. I have come, Mr. Paulton, to thank you for your
+great kindness to me, a complete stranger. Believe me, I shall never
+forget it--never as long as I live. If a friend in need is a friend
+indeed, you have been a great friend; for I never wanted a friend
+more than I did this morning. I have come to thank you and to say
+good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye!" he cried in astonishment. "Why should you leave us?"
+
+His surprise was not feigned.
+
+"Since you were kind enough to give me shelter, a serious difference
+has arisen in my position. When I came into your house I believed
+that there would be no unusual trouble about my poor husband's death.
+Now I understand in that I was mistaken. It would be monstrous on my
+part to involve you, Mr. Paulton, in any way in this unpleasantness,
+and it will be best for me to be alone."
+
+She spoke with perfect composure, and Pringle could scarcely believe
+that this calm, collected woman, with the wan smile and resigned air,
+was the one who, a little while ago, had spoken impassioned words of
+despair.
+
+Mr. Paulton was disturbed by this sudden and unexpected prospect of
+deliverance. There could be no doubt of the woman's sincerity. Here
+she was, without a suggestion from any one, offering to take the very
+step he desired. It was necessary to say something, and kind-hearted
+as he was, a polite lie was a sin utterly beneath him. He felt
+extremely awkward.
+
+"Since you consider it useful to your own interest that you should
+go, I will say nothing against your leaving us."
+
+"Allow me, Mrs. Davenport, to say that I think it will be better for
+you to be in London than here. I can then see you at any moment
+without delay," joined in Pringle.
+
+When she heard his voice she turned to him. A shadow passed across
+her face. When he ceased speaking, she merely bowed. Turning her
+glance once more on Mr. Paulton, she went on:
+
+"I have explained matters to Mrs. Paulton, and said good-bye to her.
+Your daughters are out, but your wife has promised me to say good-bye
+to them for me; and now there remains for me to say good-bye to only
+you and your son."
+
+She held out her hand.
+
+The host suffered a revulsion of feeling now that he heard her say
+good-bye, and saw her hold out her hand to him. It was hard to
+picture this beautiful woman alone in London, with her new woe. As
+long as she was an abstraction, as long as she was upstairs, and he
+regarded her as simply the source of notoriety if not of scandal, it
+was easy to wish her away at any inconvenience to herself or cost to
+him. But here she was now anticipating his wishes, doing precisely as
+he had most desired--about to launch herself alone on the vast ocean
+of London without a friend, and that, too, at the very time when she
+was most in need of friendly countenance and protection. It was too
+bad--much too bad.
+
+He took her Land, and said, with perfect sincerity now:
+
+"I am really sorry to say good-bye to you--really sorry you must go.
+I would like to be of any service to you I can. Will you, as a
+favour, promise me, if I can in any way assist you, you will let me
+know?"
+
+"I will, indeed, Mr. Paulton. I am most grateful to you, and I am
+sure you would do anything you could for me; but"--she paused and
+sighed--"I am greatly afraid no one can do much to help me now. I
+must make up my mind to bear what cannot be avoided--to bear it
+bravely."
+
+The tone in which these words were uttered and the smile which
+accompanied them were worse than any tears.
+
+"But," said Mr. Paulton, still keeping the hand she had given him,
+"do you not think you had better wait a little, until evening, even
+if no longer?"
+
+"I am greatly obliged to you. But what is to be gained by delay?
+Nothing."
+
+"Well, but where do you propose going? What hotel do you intend
+staying at?"
+
+"I know one," she answered, wearily, as she withdrew her hand gently
+from his. "It does not matter which or where."
+
+"But you are not taking anything with you! You cannot go merely as
+you are!"
+
+"I fear I must. I cannot take anything out of that awful house--no,
+never"--with a shudder. "All the things that are now there are like
+my dead husband--dead to me for ever. I can get what I need in
+London."
+
+"At all events, you must not go alone. You must allow some one to
+escort you. I am certain my son would be delighted to take you
+wherever you may wish to go."
+
+"It would give me great pleasure," said Alfred eagerly.
+
+"You are both, I know, too good and kind to mistake for
+ungraciousness the refusal which I must give to your offer. I have no
+alternative but to go alone."
+
+"Mrs. Davenport," said Pringle, "I am going to town at once. May I
+hope you will allow me to see you as far as either Ludgate Hill or
+Victoria? I am afraid that my want of caution when speaking to you a
+few minutes ago upstairs may have betrayed me into saying or implying
+more than I really should. We could talk a little more on the way
+in."
+
+"With your permission, I will go by myself. Farewell;" and, with a
+bow that included all, she left the room.
+
+They saw her walk through the little garden, open the gate, and reach
+the road. Then they lost sight of her.
+
+For a long while no one spoke. Mr. Paulton broke the silence. "I'm
+very sorry." He did not say for what; he scarcely knew for what.
+
+"She's a wonderful woman," said Jerry O'Brien. "I am not surprised at
+her not speaking to me. She bowed to me as much as to say she knew
+me. I often met her before, but never saw her in any humour like
+this. Why, in the name of all that's mysterious, would she not allow
+any one to go with her? It could not do her any harm for either you
+or Pringle or Alfred to go with her."
+
+"That struck me as most strange," said Mr. Paulton.
+
+"We are all friends here," said Pringle. "It doesn't seem strange to
+me. It seems foolish, though. If they want her they can catch her
+abroad as well as in England."
+
+"Abroad!" said Mr. Paulton, in perplexity. "Surely she is not going
+abroad before the funeral of her husband. No woman would think of
+leaving the country before her husband is buried."
+
+"Under certain circumstances, a woman might if _an inquest_ was to
+precede the burial."
+
+"Oh, I see."
+
+"Now, gentlemen, I think we ought to be able to guess why she would
+have no luggage, no escort. She is going to disguise herself and fly
+to the Continent."
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VII.
+
+                        LIGHT AFTER DARKNESS.
+
+
+When Mrs. Davenport left Paulton she walked straight to Herne Hill
+railway station. She asked when the next train would start for
+Victoria, and having learned there would be one in ten minutes, she
+took a ticket for that terminus, and then sat down on one of the
+seats on the platform.
+
+It was cold, raw, dull, rainless February weather, and she was
+lightly clad, but she did not mind that. Her thoughts were turned
+inward, and she had but a dimly reflected idea of things surrounding
+her.
+
+When the train steamed into the station, she rose in a quick but
+mechanical way, and took her seat in an empty compartment. Upon
+arriving at Victoria, she left the train in the same quick,
+mechanical way, got into a cab, and drove to a house in Jermyn
+Street. Having engaged a bed-room and sitting-room here, she sat down
+at once and wrote a letter.
+
+As soon as the letter was finished she left the house, dropped the
+letter into the first post-pillar, and then ascended to the middle
+section of Regent Street. She visited several shops, bought many
+things, and ordered many more. When this was done she paused,
+seemingly at a loss.
+
+"My letter," she thought, "will not be there until night. In the
+meantime, what shall I do?" She walked slowly down Regent Street. At
+last she started. "How stupid," she thought, "I have been not to
+telegraph! If I had telegraphed I could have had an answer in an
+hour."
+
+She hastened forward, asked a policeman where the nearest telegraph
+office was, and on arriving there despatched a message. Then she went
+back to Jermyn Street, and, laying aside her bonnet and mantle,
+waited.
+
+In an hour and a half a reply came. It ran:
+
+
+"_I shall be with you almost as soon as this_."
+
+
+When she read the message she got up and walked about the room in a
+state of great excitement. It was now dark, and the gas had not yet
+been lighted in the room. As she paced up and down she wrung her
+hands and moaned. After a while she became calmer, but still
+continued walking up and down. She had eaten nothing that day, yet
+she felt no want of food. In fact, when the servant, upon her return,
+suggested that she had better order dinner, she had refused to do so
+with a shudder. She knew she should need for the coming interview all
+her strength, but she could not bear the notion of food. She had not
+slept during the whole night, yet she felt no want of sleep.
+
+"I feel," she thought, "as though my sorrows were immortal, and that
+I shall require earthly succour no more."
+
+She had not long to wait in solitude. A hansom drove up to the door,
+a man jumped out, and in a few minutes he was ushered into the room.
+He found her still in the dark, leaning on the mantelshelf.
+
+"Marion," he said--"are you here, Marion?"
+
+"Yes," she answered, "I am here."
+
+"I cannot see you, it is so dark."
+
+"It is very dark. It never has been darker in all my life, and you
+know it."
+
+"Will you not shake hands with me and order lights?"
+
+"Neither. What is to be said can best be said in the dark. It is in
+the nature of darkness itself. Sit down. I prefer to stand; I wish
+you to sit. Sit down."
+
+His eyes were now becoming accustomed to the obscurity. He found a
+chair, and sat down.
+
+"Are you alone?" he asked, looking up at where she stood, motionless,
+by the mantelpiece.
+
+"_Absolutely_," she answered, in a cold, hard voice. "And you know
+it."
+
+"How could I know it? I got your telegram, and came at once. Marion,
+you are speaking to me in a tone I am unused to from you."
+
+"Ay," she said, "I am unused to my own voice in its present tone. I
+am risking much for you, and you do not deserve that I should risk
+anything for you."
+
+"Marion," he cried, half-rising, "you have not left him? You have not
+resolved to throw your fate in with mine at last? Marion, my darling!
+Marion, let me come to you."
+
+"Stay where you are," she said, in a tone of perplexity, and with a
+shudder. "If you move from that chair, it must only be for the door.
+Remember this once for all."
+
+"You are very hard, Marion--very hard. It is a long day since we met,
+and now you will not even give me your hand. You would give your hand
+to the most ordinary friend you have: think of what we were once."
+
+His voice had a firm, manly, straightforward ring in it, and withal
+an undertone of passionate entreaty.
+
+"I have thought too much of what has been once. I have thought too
+much of what was between you and me long ago. I have another matter
+to think of to-night."
+
+"And what is that, Marion?"
+
+"I have to think of last night."
+
+He uttered a cry of surprise and half rose from his chair.
+
+"Did you know I was there? I thought you were asleep. He said you
+were. Did he tell you I was there?"
+
+She paused a moment and made a powerful effort to control herself.
+When she spoke, her voice was unsteady, and showed that a violent
+conflict was going on in her breast.
+
+"He told me nothing," she said. "I have sent for you in order that
+you may tell me all. Now go on. All, remember."
+
+"All?" he asked. "I would rather not tell you all. I never told you a
+lie yet."
+
+"All," she said--"all, or go."
+
+He shifted uneasily for a few minutes on his chair, and then spoke:
+
+"Well, Marion, since you will have it all, you shall. I am no better
+than ever I was. I leave it to you to say if I could, being only
+human, be much worse. You might have made a different man of me once.
+You wouldn't. Let that pass."
+
+"Yes, let that pass, and let it pass quickly. I did not sell you for
+a sum of money."
+
+Her voice was scornful.
+
+"No, you did not. You did better. You sold yourself for a sum of
+money. Shall we cry truce?"
+
+"Yes; go on."
+
+"I've been a good deal on the Continent. I've been doing a great many
+things I should not do. Amongst others, I have been gambling; and,
+worst of all, I have lost. There are many excuses for a man gambling.
+There is no excuse for a man losing. Well, I got cleaned out, and I
+came home--I mean I went back to Ireland.
+
+"Naturally I faced south. Naturally I went on to Waterford. Naturally
+I found myself in Kilcash."
+
+She made a gesture of dissent. But it was too dark for him to see.
+She said: "Most unwise and most unnatural."
+
+"It may have been unwise, but it was most natural. What can be more
+natural than that a man should go where his heart---- But if I say
+any more in this strain, you will be angry?"
+
+"Most assuredly,"
+
+"Well, when I got to Kilcash, I kept my ears open, and soon I heard
+that you were about to leave Kilcash House and take a house in or
+near London. I inquired still further, found out the day you were to
+leave, and got the address of the house you had taken. I came on to
+London.
+
+"I arrived here the night before last. I knew you could not be in
+your new house until late in the day. I wanted to call most
+particularly. There was not an hour to be lost. It was neck or
+nothing with me. I resolved to call at Crescent House that very
+night, and I did."
+
+"You did?" she said, in a voice like a terrified echo.
+
+"You knew I was there. He told you?"
+
+"No; go on. Go on, I say. You did not ask for me?"
+
+"No. I wanted to see him."
+
+"It was close to eleven, or after it then?"
+
+"After it."
+
+"And you wanted to see him at such an hour, and you knew he was an
+invalid?" she said, scornfully.
+
+"I was an invalid myself."
+
+"You! What was the matter with you?"--again that tone of scorn.
+
+"A worse disease than his--poverty."
+
+"What!" she cried, leaving the mantelpiece, and going a step towards
+him in the dark. "I thought you got the price of your--of _me_
+before."
+
+"Marion, you are unjust--cruelly unjust. When I called on your
+husband last night, it was not to _beg_ or to try and get money from
+him, because of anything in which you or I ever took part. I had a
+claim with which you have no connection, and the nature of which I
+will not divulge to you. He may if he likes."
+
+"He never will," she said, with something between a laugh and a sob.
+
+"So be it. It may be all the better the matter should never be spoken
+of. But to proceed. I knocked and he let me in. He explained that you
+were gone to bed, and that he and you were alone in the house. He was
+very polite, for he had an idea of why I came--or rather of the card
+of introduction, so to speak, that I brought with me. He made me take
+a chair, told me he was not well enough to lie down, as he had one of
+his bad attacks of asthma, though by no means a very bad one, and we
+had a pleasant general conversation for half-an-hour or so."
+
+"Pleasant conversation!" she cried, falling back to her old position
+at the chimney-piece.
+
+"Yes, I assure you it was quite a pleasant conversation. He told me
+all the incidents of your journey over from Ireland, and I amused him
+with my experiences on the Continent."
+
+"This is too ghastly," she said. "Do not tell me any more about it.
+Did he give you--what you came for?"
+
+"Oh, yes, or part of it."
+
+"And then?" she asked, in a hard, constrained voice.
+
+"And then after a few more words I stood up and said good-bye, left
+the house, and came back to town."
+
+"Wait," she said. "I will give you another chance. Sit where you are.
+I shall be back in a few minutes."
+
+"In the dark?" he asked.
+
+"Yes. Is there anything in the dark that frightens you?"
+
+"No," he answered; "but it is stupid to sit in the dark alone."
+
+"Perhaps when I am gone you may not be quite alone. You may have
+memories for company."
+
+There was great meaning in her voice.
+
+He said merely "Perhaps," and she was gone.
+
+While she was away he sat perfectly still. There was little or no
+light from the dull low fire, and as the blinds were down and
+curtains drawn, none reached the room from the street.
+
+In a few minutes he heard the door open and some one enter. She came
+to her old position by the chimney-piece and said:
+
+"Now, if you can find a match, you may light the gas."
+
+He had wax cigar-lights in his pocket. He struck one, and in a moment
+the gas flared up. He looked at her, and cried, starting back:
+
+"Merciful heavens, Marion, what masquerade is this!"
+
+"No masquerade," she said calmly, scrutinizing him. "These are my
+widow's weeds come from the mourning warehouse a few minutes ago.
+They say you ought to be prepared to see me in them."
+
+"I--I!--prepared to see you in widow's weeds! Is Davenport dead?"
+
+"Women whose husbands are living do not wear such things as these.
+They say you ought to be prepared to see me dressed as I am now."
+
+She touched the streamers of her cap and pointed to the crape of her
+dress.
+
+"What do you mean by saying _they_ say I ought to be prepared for
+this? Who are _they?_--and what do you mean?"
+
+"As I left the room a moment ago, a servant brought me this note.
+Read it."
+
+He took the note and read it first quickly, a second time slowly.
+Then, letting it fall from his grasp, he threw his hands above his
+head, and crying out, "Oh, God!" fell back on a chair.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER VIII.
+
+                MR. DAVENPORT'S ACCOUNT OF THE MATTER.
+
+
+Shortly after Mrs. Davenport left Carlingford House, Half Moon Lane,
+that afternoon, a supplementary luncheon was announced, and the four
+men went into the dining-room.
+
+Mr. Paulton had already lunched with the family, but he wished to be
+with the others; so he sat down at the table with them, and broke a
+biscuit and half-filled a glass with sherry. Jerry O'Brien and
+Pringle were in no humour for trifling with food; they were both
+downright hungry. Alfred ate mechanically, and was much pre-occupied.
+The talk, therefore, for a quarter of an hour, was slight,
+fragmentary, as though by some agreement: no one referred to what had
+just occurred in the library, or to anything else connected with
+Crescent House. Young Pringle felt that although there must be and
+are extremely interesting tragedies in the world, luncheon, when one
+is hungry, was a matter not to be neglected. He had more than once in
+a criminal court eaten sandwiches and drunk sherry in the interval
+for luncheon, with the moral certainty that his client, who had been
+temporarily removed from the dock, would be sentenced to death before
+the Court rose, and hanged before that day four weeks.
+
+Here were a cold rabbit pie, cold ham, and excellent sherry,
+well-baked, fine white bread, and nicknacks, and no particular reason
+for hurry--no fear of hearing "Silence" called out while one was but
+half-finished. The day was dull, but there was an ample fire burning
+brightly in the grate, the chair was soft and well-designed, so why
+should he bother himself for another quarter of an hour?
+
+It was very easy for him to hold his tongue and to assure himself
+that he need not bother himself just now about Mrs. Davenport and her
+unpleasant predicament; but her predicament would not be banished,
+and every now and then some incident of either the drawing-room or
+library interview would rush into his mind with all the unexpected
+suddenness of that unwelcome cry of "Silence!" in the middle of
+luncheon at a criminal trial.
+
+Upon the whole, that luncheon was not as calm or as successful as
+young Pringle meant it to be. He had never seen any one at all like
+Mrs. Davenport before, and he could make little or nothing of her. He
+now began to think that he had talked flippantly when he said she was
+certainly about to leave the country. Reviewing all he had seen and
+heard, he came to the conclusion that the safest thing for him to
+assume at present was--nothing. At length he spoke, addressing Alfred
+and Jerry O'Brien:
+
+"Although Mrs. Davenport did not say anything to the effect when
+leaving, I suppose I had better act for her--until I hear something
+to the contrary."
+
+Jerry O'Brien glanced at Alfred, and saw what he wished to say, but
+held back from speaking, because of the trouble his hasty action of
+the night before had brought about. Therefore Jerry made himself
+spokesman for his friend.
+
+"Of course, Pringle, you go on acting for her, on her behalf. She has
+left this house finally now, and is not likely to cause any new
+unpleasantness here. Whether Mrs. Davenport is to blame or not, she
+can't be left alone and unaided in such a strait as this. What do you
+say, Mr. Paulton?"
+
+"I am quite of your opinion, O'Brien. Now that she is out of the
+house I would be disposed to do anything I could for her. It's
+different now from what it was an hour ago. Go on, Mr. Pringle; and I
+most sincerely hope she may come out of the inquiry without the
+shadow of blame."
+
+"I sincerely hope so," said Pringle, rising. Luncheon was over by
+this time. "Now, the first thing I should like, is to have a look at
+the place--at this Crescent House, as you call it."
+
+Alfred and O'Brien got up, and in a few minutes the three found
+themselves in the hall of that house. The police were already there.
+
+Pringle told the officers who he was and then proceeded to make
+inquiries. The following was the state of affairs at that time:
+
+The inspector had been there about an hour. He had made an elaborate,
+but not exhaustive search in the room. The body was in the position
+it had been found in. An empty two-ounce bottle had been discovered
+on the floor. This was the bottle. It was labelled chloroform, smelt
+of chloroform, and had no cork in it. A cork which fitted it, and
+which also smelt, although faintly, of chloroform, had been found on
+the table close by the body.
+
+In the pockets of the deceased had been discovered a number of
+letters, a small sum of money, and a pocket-book. This was the
+pocket-book. It was thin, and covered with Russia leather; it was
+old, and had been but little used. It contained several addresses,
+and on the first leaf was written a date of eleven years ago. It was
+more than likely this date corresponded with that on which the book
+became the property of deceased.
+
+Most of the memoranda in that book could have no bearing on the
+present case, as most of them had evidently been made long ago. The
+last entry but one was dated in what was believed to be the
+handwriting of the deceased. It was made more than two years ago.
+After this last entry but one, a leaf was missing. A leaf had
+evidently been torn out--and clumsily torn out, too--for a jagged
+portion of the leaf remained behind.
+
+Then came the last entry of all. This was also apparently in the
+handwriting of deceased. The writing was in pencil, and very shaky,
+and for a long time could not be deciphered. It was headed "Crescent
+House." The domicile fixed the date, for the night before was the
+only occasion on which Mr. Davenport crossed the threshold of that
+house. He had not even seen the house before renting it, but took it
+on the representation of an agent. The words on this page were:
+
+
+"_Pretended death. Blake gone. He emptied chloroform on me--held me
+down. Can't stir. Dying_."
+
+
+After reading this the three men stood aghast for a while. They
+looked at one another. They looked at the inspector. The inspector
+shook his head.
+
+"There's hangman's work here," he said; and he was about to turn
+away, when a sudden thought struck Pringle. He said to the inspector:
+
+"I beg your pardon. Does that pocket-book contain any London address
+of Mr. Davenport?"
+
+"I don't know," said the inspector; "and I am afraid I have already
+shown you too much."
+
+"I'd be very much obliged to you if you'd see. I represent Mrs.
+Davenport in this matter, and at the moment I don't know where to
+find her. She omitted to give me her address when she left me this
+afternoon. I want to write to her, and if you find any London address
+of Mr. Davenport, I'll chance directing my letter there. That can do
+no harm to any one."
+
+The inspector hesitated, but at length opened the pocket-book, and
+after a search, said:
+
+"There's an address here at Jermyn Street; but it's six years old."
+
+"Never mind," said Pringle; "I'll risk it. What is it?"
+
+The inspector read it out, and Pringle took it down.
+
+Pringle, Alfred Paulton, and Jerry O'Brien were about to leave the
+room, when the first turned to the inspector, and said:
+
+"By-the-way, you did not find the page that has been torn out of the
+pocket-book?"
+
+"No," said the inspector, nodding his head significantly; "but
+there's evidence enough on what we _did_ find to hang a score of
+men."
+
+The three then walked to Herne Hill railway station, and took tickets
+for Ludgate. At the latter place Pringle left the two friends and
+went back to his office.
+
+Here he sat down and wrote the following letter:
+
+
+                                  "Lincoln's Inn Fields, E.C.
+                                        "Feb. --, 18--.
+
+"Dear Madam,
+
+"By accident I got this address, and will chance writing you here in
+the hope this note may reach you.
+
+"I have been to Crescent House. A pocket-book of the late Mr.
+Davenport has been found. It contains the following entry in the
+handwriting of deceased: 'Pretended death. Blake gone. He emptied the
+chloroform on me--held me down. Can't stir. Dying.'
+
+"Awaiting your further instructions,
+
+                   "I am, dear Madam,
+
+                       "Yours faithfully,
+
+                           "Richard Pringle."
+
+
+This was the note which Mrs. Davenport handed Thomas Blake as she
+stood over him in her fresh widow's weeds the night after her
+husband's death.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER IX.
+
+                        "WHICH OF US IS MAD?"
+
+
+The morning after the interview between Mrs. Davenport and Tom Blake
+in Jermyn Street, there were paragraphs about Mr. Davenport's death
+in the daily papers. These paragraphs were almost colourless, and
+barely suggested any cause for uneasiness. They all wound up by
+saying that the inquest would be held next day.
+
+That afternoon Richard Pringle called on chance at the house in
+Jermyn Street, and found Mrs. Davenport at home. She received
+him in a dreamy, half-conscious way, and answered listlessly the
+common-place questions he put to her. Before seeing her he had made
+up his mind not to refer to the scene which had taken place between
+them yesterday. He was firmly convinced she would not give him her
+full confidence, and that to seek to get at the bottom of the affair
+would be only to court obstruction. From her manner he assumed she
+wished nothing to be said of what had taken place in the Paultons'
+drawing-room at Dulwich. He began by trying to prepare her for the
+inquest. She shuddered slightly when he used that word, and yet
+seemed but indifferently alive to the importance of the situation.
+She answered in monosyllables, and contented herself mostly with
+merely bowing her head in token that she attended to what he said.
+
+No material advantage could be gained by speaking of the former
+interview between them. He had drawn his own conclusions from it, and
+it was abundantly clear to him she wished that interview ignored. Now
+that he was once more under the spell of her presence, he felt his
+interest in her case rekindle, and the charm of her beauty
+reasserting itself.
+
+One thing, however, must be spoken of. It was absolutely necessary he
+should say something of the note he had written her last evening. He
+waited for a pause, or rather caused a pause in the conversation, for
+she volunteered nothing.
+
+"Having found this Jermyn Street address in the pocket-book of Mr.
+Davenport, I sent a few lines to you yesterday evening in the hope
+they might reach you. Did you get them?"
+
+This question seemed to arouse her attention. She clasped her hands
+in her lap, and, turning her face fully towards him, answered:
+
+"Yes; I got your note and the extract from the pocket-book also."
+
+She seemed perfectly cool and collected.
+
+"It would be well if you would tell me anything you know about that
+entry on the leaf of the pocket-book. It has a terrible significance
+in the case."
+
+Her calmness now astonished him. He had the evening before been
+prepared for an explosion. He had expected to find her completely
+broken down, or in a state of high nervous excitement to-day. Up to
+this she had been listless; now she was attentive and mute. Her face
+looked paler than yesterday, but he could not say whether this was
+owing to its own loss of colour or to the effect of the white cap or
+the crape round her throat. He waited a moment with a view to giving
+weight to his next question. It was:
+
+"With regard to the memorandum made by Mr. Davenport, is there
+anything you would like to say to me? In the face of that memorandum,
+you of course know that Mr. Blake's presence will be essential at
+the--inquiry."
+
+"I suppose so," she said, unmoved. She replied to the latter part of
+his speech first. "With regard to the entry in his pocket-book, it is
+right you should know that my late husband was at one time subject to
+hallucinations, delusions."
+
+"And you think this writing of his may have been the result of a
+delusion or hallucination?"
+
+"It is quite possible; I can explain it in no other way."
+
+"Oh, this is a great relief! I did not know he was subject to
+hallucinations. This is a most important fact. What was the nature of
+the delusion under which he suffered?"
+
+Up to this point Pringle had felt in despair. Now his interest and
+courage rose.
+
+"He fancied people had formed a conspiracy against him, and that
+their design was to rob him first and then murder him."
+
+Her enunciation was particularly distinct, her face impassible.
+
+"This is most vital," he said. "Indeed it may explain much that now
+sorely needs explanation. You no doubt often had the opportunity of
+seeing him labouring under these ailments?"
+
+"No--never. He has not had an attack since we were married."
+
+"Well, we must only do the best we can. Do you know if there is
+anything like insanity in his family?"
+
+Pringle felt no little disappointment that she could not personally
+testify to the disease; but he was resolved to make the most of it.
+
+"I am not aware that there is anything which could be called insanity
+in the family. His brother is decidedly odd, and Mr. Davenport was
+odd at times. For instance, as I told you, he would never bring old
+servants into a new house. There were other little traits--some
+theories he had about betting on horses, and which I do not
+understand, but which I have been told were at least fanciful."
+
+Pringle's curiosity was aroused. Outside his profession the thing in
+which he took most interest was horse-racing.
+
+"I am not sure that it can be of any consequence; but if you could
+remember it, I should like to know what that peculiarity in betting
+was."
+
+"I am not quite sure," she said; "but I have an indistinct
+recollection he made it a rule never to bet on any horse the name of
+which began with a letter lower down in the alphabet than 'N.'"
+
+"Ah!" said the young solicitor, in a tone of surprise and reflection.
+He resolved to look this matter up when he got back to the office. He
+was still curious. "And may I ask if you know whether he found the
+system a good one? If he found it to fail oftener than to succeed,
+and still kept to it, one might put the persistency down to mental
+obliquity."
+
+Although he said this in a confident tone, the words were no sooner
+uttered than he began to doubt their justice, for he had known many
+men who adhered to a system which had nine times out of ten betrayed
+them.
+
+"I cannot tell you. I do not know."
+
+"If he betted heavily, you would have been likely to hear whether he
+won or lost. Of course when I say heavily, I don't mean that he ran
+any danger of crippling himself. But he must have been elated when he
+won and dejected when he lost?"
+
+"No. He did not bet heavily. He never seemed to care whether he won
+or lost. It was the system which he prized, and not the wager."
+
+Young Pringle thought this was a sure sign of a disordered mind; but
+he kept the opinion to himself, as he considered it more a matter of
+private than professional interest. He said:
+
+"I suppose Mr. Davenport could not have been in financial
+embarrassment owing to any betting transactions?"
+
+"I am certain he was not."
+
+"Or from any other cause?"
+
+"I am sure he was not."
+
+"This may be of the greatest value. I beg of you to believe I am
+asking this question solely with a view to your interest."
+
+He paused and looked earnestly at her for permission to go on.
+
+She bowed.
+
+"Have you any reason to think that the unfortunate event which has
+occurred might have been brought about by his own act?"
+
+She moved her hands nervously in her lap.
+
+"I am not sure that I understand you."
+
+"There is nothing in your mind which could lead you to suppose he has
+committed suicide?"
+
+She shuddered visibly and answered in a constrained whisper:
+
+"Nothing--nothing whatever."
+
+"Well, Mrs. Davenport, it will be absolutely necessary for us, in the
+face of the memorandum made on the leaf of his pocket-book, to have
+some theory of what took place. Can you suggest any theory?"
+
+He spoke gravely, impressively. His personal interest in her was
+again growing stronger than his professional interest in what he now
+regarded as her defence. He swore to himself that he would use not
+only all his skill as an advocate, but all his faculties as a man to
+extricate this beautiful woman from the horrible position in which he
+found her, and to assuage as much as might be the pains she would
+have to endure. Under the overwhelming spell of her rich comeliness,
+and in front of the evidence afforded by her presence here this
+afternoon, he reproached himself bitterly for the suspicion he had
+uttered the day before as to her fleeing from the country. It was
+brutal of him to think of such a thing then, and still more brutal of
+him to speak his thoughts.
+
+She did not reply to his last question at once. She looked at him
+steadily, without flinching, but remained silent.
+
+He spoke again, this time earnestly, almost passionately:
+
+"Mrs. Davenport, if you give me any theory to go on, I promise you,
+upon my word of honour as a man, to make the most I can of it. I'll
+leave no stone unturned to put things in their best light. I'll work
+without ceasing; I'll do nothing else, think of nothing else until I
+see you through this ordeal. I will not ask you again for any
+confidence you wish to withhold from me. But if out of justice to
+yourself you will not, out of justice to me you _must_ give me
+something to go on. You _must_ give me at least a theory."
+
+He spoke to her eagerly, fiercely, and held out his hands towards her
+in supplication.
+
+She dropped her eyes a moment as if to collect her thoughts, and then
+looking straight into his face once more, said with a slight tremor
+in her voice:
+
+"I have a theory; but I am afraid it is not one that will meet with
+your approval."
+
+"If it is the best you can give me, trust me to do the best that can
+be done with it. But, for heaven's sake, give me the best one you
+can. Give me a chance. All I want is a chance to show you my
+devotion--to your interests."
+
+He felt he was being carried away by the irresistible magic of her
+eyes. He paused after the word "devotion," and spoke the final phrase
+of his speech in a less fervent tone, to modify by matter and manner
+what had gone before.
+
+"There is," she said, unclasping and then clasping her hands again,
+"but one theory possible in the case. As I told you a moment ago, Mr.
+Davenport was at one period of his life subject to delusions----"
+
+"Pardon me," interrupted Pringle; "you said awhile ago that you had
+no experience of your own as to this infirmity. I assume we shall be
+able to produce evidence to prove that?"
+
+"Undoubtedly there will be evidence."
+
+"May I ask from whom we are to expect this evidence? Mr. Davenport's
+brother? He knows all about it, I suppose?"
+
+"No, not Mr. Davenport's brother. I am not sure that Mr. Edward
+Davenport ever knew anything about it."
+
+"That is unfortunate, since, so far as I understand, Mr. Edward
+Davenport is the late Mr. Davenport's only surviving relative."
+
+"He is. But at the time when Mr. Davenport had those seizures he was
+abroad, on the Continent. For many years of his life Mr. Davenport
+did not live in the United Kingdoms. When I first knew him he had
+just come home after travelling for a long time in America and
+Europe. Although I am not quite sure, I think up to a very short time
+before I met him he had been out of the country most of his life. He
+was not very communicative about the past, or indeed on any subject.
+It was while he was staying for a time in Florence he had these
+attacks of hallucination----"
+
+"And the evidence we can command is that of an eye-witness?" broke in
+Pringle.
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"The inquest will be to-morrow. May I not have the name of the
+witness? There is no time to be lost. In fact, this evidence, this
+extremely important evidence, comes very late. I am sorry I did not
+hear of it before. But we must do the best we can with it."
+
+He spoke in a voice of deep concern.
+
+"There was a reason why you did not hear of this evidence earlier.
+You asked me to give you my theory, Had I not better do so before
+going into other matters?"
+
+She raised her clasped hands slightly from her lap in faint protest.
+
+"I beg your pardon for interrupting you. By all means let me have the
+theory first. My anxiety betrayed me into asking questions which
+ought to have been deferred."
+
+He was filled with admiration of this woman who could keep so closely
+to the point, and with shame for himself for his unthrifty straying
+from it.
+
+"As you are no doubt aware, chloroform affects different people in
+different ways. A little of it will kill some people; a large
+quantity will scarcely affect others. Many under its influence become
+delirious and rave. At certain periods, while under the power of
+chloroform, one may be relieved of pain, conscious of surrounding
+things, capable of moving, and yet delirious. The theory I would
+suggest is that Mr. Davenport inhaled some chloroform to ease a spasm
+of asthma, that he became delirious, that he had a return of his old
+hallucination, then wrote what was found on the leaf torn from the
+book, and while endeavouring to administer a second dose to himself,
+spilled the contents of the bottle over his beard and chest."
+
+Her words came in as calm and measured a way as though she were
+speaking on an abstract subject to an indifferent audience.
+
+As she went on, Pringle's admiration gave way to amazement. A
+scientific witness could not be more unmoved. Was it possible this
+superb woman opposite him had been explaining to him in these cold,
+measured accents her way of accounting for the death of a husband who
+had been alive and without any immediate danger of death a couple of
+days ago, and who had since died a death which was, to say the least
+of it, provocative of inquiry?
+
+He leaned back in his chair, sighed thoughtfully, and knit his brows.
+He cleared his throat once or twice to speak, but remained silent. He
+felt dull and heavy, as though something oppressed his chest.
+
+"That is my theory--the only possible theory," she said, leaning
+forward and looking quietly into his face, without any change in the
+expression of her own.
+
+He shook himself slightly, looked perplexed, not satisfied. At last
+he spoke:
+
+"And what evidence have we in support of this supposition?"
+
+She leaned back in her chair and whispered, "None."
+
+He started, sat up, and looked at her keenly. He drew down his brows
+over his eyes as though the light hurt him.
+
+"I am afraid," said he, "such a theory would not stand without most
+substantial testimony. No jury would give a satisfactory verdict on a
+mere statement such as that, for, you see, there are the last words
+written by the deceased." Until this moment he had not used that
+cold, formless word "deceased" to her. But he felt now that he was
+regarding the matter in a purely professional way, and that so was
+she. In a moment he continued, laying impressively significant
+emphasis on his words: "How are we to explain the fact of Mr. Blake's
+name appearing on that piece of paper?"
+
+"Mr. Blake," she said, half-closing her eyes as though she was weary,
+"was the last person he saw before his death, and, when the delirium
+came upon him, he naturally introduced the name of Mr. Blake as being
+that of the person most immediate to his memory."
+
+"What!" cried Pringle, starting up off his chair and leaning towards
+her, "Do we admit he was there?"
+
+He could scarcely contain himself for astonishment. He looked at her
+as though he expected to find her transformed into the person of
+Blake himself.
+
+"Undoubtedly," she said, opening her eyes slowly and looking up at
+him. "Mr. Blake was there a little while before Mr. Davenport died."
+
+Pringle groaned, ran his fingers excitedly through his hair, and
+began pacing the room up and down hastily.
+
+After a dozen turns, he stopped in front of her chair.
+
+"When did you learn that your late husband had had hallucinations?"
+
+"Last night."
+
+"Last night only! Who told you?"
+
+"Mr. Blake."
+
+"Mr. Blake!--Mr. Blake! And who saw your husband when he was
+suffering from these hallucinations?"
+
+"Mr. Blake."
+
+"And is he the witness we have as to the hallucinations?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Merciful heavens! Which of us is mad? Where did you meet this
+Blake?"
+
+"I wrote to him to come here, and he came."
+
+"_You wrote him to come here!_ Heaven help you--heaven help you! It
+is you who are mad."
+
+And he hastened out of the room.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER X.
+
+                      THE ELDER PRINGLE SPEAKS.
+
+
+When Richard Pringle reached the street, he set off at a rapid walk
+for Lincoln's Inn Fields. His thoughts and feelings were too much
+disturbed for reasoning. The dialogue of the past hour hurried
+through his brain in an incoherent, inconsequential mass. In the
+intense excitement of the last few minutes, he had told her she was
+mad, and he almost believed it. He had known from the previous day
+that Blake had been at Crescent House on the night of Mr. Davenport's
+death. He had most plainly, most impressively given her to understand
+that he knew it. She must have seen plainly then he attached most
+disastrous importance to that visit of her former lover. Since then
+the leaf torn out of the pocket-book had been discovered. On that
+leaf appeared a deliberate accusation of murder in the handwriting of
+the dead man against Blake. That, in all reason, was sufficiently
+serious; but worse followed. She had the day after her husband's
+death asked this man Blake to visit her!
+
+From Blake she had, Pringle felt not the least doubt, adopted that
+elaborate and childish theory of the fatal event. Blake had told her
+in that interview a thing neither she nor his brother had ever known
+before--namely, that the deceased man had at one time, and to Blake's
+personal knowledge, suffered from mental aberration of a kind which
+would exactly explain away that damnatory writing on the paper--if
+any one could believe Blake's story! The whole affair was simply
+monstrous. If he viewed the matter from a purely professional point
+of view, he would have been heartily sorry he ever connected himself
+with it. But he could not regard the case solely as a matter between
+client and solicitor. He was under the spell of this woman, and he
+could not, if he would, and he would not if he could, escape. Only
+one thing was clear to his mind now, and that took the form of
+muttered words:
+
+"_There will be business for the hangman in this affair_."
+
+When he arrived at the office he found his father in, and having
+locked the door of the private room, he communicated to the old man
+the substance of the interview which had just been brought to a
+close.
+
+His father listened to the recital with the most circumstantial
+patience. When the son had finished his tale, and wound up with the
+opinion that some one was going to swing for the matter, the father,
+to the son's unspeakable astonishment, looked up cheerfully, and
+said:
+
+"I am not at all sure of that, Dick--not at all."
+
+"Bless my soul, father, where do you see the way out of it?"
+
+"I can't say," said the elder man, "that I see my way out of it; but
+I am sure _they_ do. Just run over the facts briefly: This woman was
+formerly in love with Blake; Blake is bought off by old Davenport,
+and Davenport marries the beauty. After years, the married couple
+come to London, and put up by themselves in a detached house. That
+night the old lover visits the house, and shortly after he leaves,
+the wife raises an alarm, and the husband is found dead. The doctor
+called in is not fully satisfied, and hints that the man has been
+killed by chloroform--a drug frequently used by deceased. The widow
+finds shelter in a neighbour's house. While there, she is given to
+understand by her attorney that it is supposed her old lover was in
+the house within a short time of the death, and that death is
+believed to have arisen from choloroform, not asthma. Upon this she
+displays great emotion, and declines to give any further information.
+She leaves the neighbour's house that afternoon, and goes to a house
+in which she stayed about six years ago when in London with her
+husband. From that house she sends for her old lover, and has an
+interview with him. Meantime a document is found in the handwriting
+of deceased, saying her old lover has poisoned him (deceased). Her
+solicitor sends a copy of this document to her. Next day solicitor
+calls upon her, and finds her quite calm. She explains her theory of
+her husband's death, and attributes the document mentioned to
+hallucination, from which she alleges deceased suffered earlier in
+life, and that death was the result of accidentally spilling the
+chloroform by deceased. That's the case, as far as I can make it out.
+Am I right, Dick?"
+
+"Yes, sir--quite right."
+
+"At the first glance it's a strong case."
+
+"Did you ever, short of eye-witnesses, see a stronger?"
+
+"I've seen a lot of cases in my time--a lot of cases. Wait a bit,
+Dick, until we have another look at it. A motive lies on the very
+surface; nothing could be plainer than the motive implied by the
+case. It is: the old lover poisons the husband in order that the
+woman may be free to marry him. A money motive may turn up later on;
+if we may find that the widow is rich. Dick, I am getting to be an
+old man now, and I give you one piece of advice, lest I may forget
+it: _Always_ suspect a case where the motive is glaringly obvious.
+Now, the two survivors in this affair are people of good education,
+good position and intelligence, are they not?"
+
+"Most assuredly, sir."
+
+"Neither of the two is an idiot?"
+
+"I am greatly afraid, father, that the lady's reason is affected."
+
+"Observe, Dick, I did not ask you whether both are sane or mad. But
+is either of them an _idiot_--_a drivelling idiot_--whom you would
+not leave alone in a room where there was a fire or a razor?"
+
+"No, no! They are both, as far as I know--I never saw him--rational
+on the surface, anyway. But I fear the strain has been too much for
+Mrs. Davenport."
+
+"Never mind about that. She may for my purpose be as mad as she
+likes, so long as she is not a drivelling idiot. Now, supposing
+either of them had committed the crime of murder in this case, do you
+suppose that until drivelling idiocy had been fully established in
+one or the other, either of them would behave in such a childish way
+as you describe? Why, it would shame any Bedlamite in Europe for rank
+silliness! The man who tried to cool a red-hot poker in a barrel of
+gunpowder would be only a little rash compared with either of these
+two, if, as you seem to suppose, either is responsible for the dead
+man's death."
+
+The younger man's face brightened.
+
+"Then you think, sir, there is still good reason to hope?"
+
+"I am sure there is no reason to do anything else. This Mrs.
+Davenport, at your first interview, trusts you fully up to a certain
+point, and then suddenly refuses to give you any more confidence. At
+your second interview she gives you all, and more than all, the
+confidence you require. What has wrought that change? She has seen
+the old lover. She is acting upon his advice. She has given you a
+great deal of confidence, but she has not told you everything. She is
+keeping back the most important piece of all."
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"The line of his and her defence. He will, of course, be
+professionally represented at the inquest. There will be some one
+there for him, anyhow. I am firmly convinced he has an unanswerable
+and startling defence. If I were you I should take every precaution I
+could for the protection of my client; but I feel fully assured _he_
+will clear up the whole case. Now run away. I've got in another
+batch of those Millington deeds, and I want to get through them by
+dinner-time. Will you be home to dinner?"
+
+"I don't think so, sir. I'll run out to Dulwich and see if there is
+anything new."
+
+When young Pringle found himself at Dulwich he went to Carlingford
+House; for he knew that the folk there, especially Alfred, would be
+anxious to hear the news, and this analysis of the case by his father
+had put him in good heart.
+
+The day was fine and mild for the season. As he entered the garden of
+Carlingford House, he saw, through a tall wicket gateway, two elderly
+men walking in the grounds at the rear. One of these he recognised as
+Mr. Paulton; the other was a stranger to him.
+
+He passed through the wicket gateway into the back garden. Just as he
+did so the two men faced fully round, and Mr. Paulton cried out, as
+he hastened towards the solicitor:
+
+"Mr. Pringle, you are the very man we want. We were this minute
+talking of you. Mr. Davenport, this is Mr. Pringle, who has kindly
+consented, at our request, to act in this unhappy affair as solicitor
+for Mrs. Davenport."
+
+"Sir," said the dead man's brother, bowing low, "I am very glad to
+make your acquaintance. I hope you find yourself in the enjoyment of
+good health."
+
+"I am quite well, thank you," said Pringle, somewhat taken aback by
+the old-fashioned formality of the other.
+
+The man who stood in front of him was a square-made, thick-set,
+low-sized man of close on sixty years of age. His hair was black and
+long and lank, profusely oiled, and hung down on the collar of his
+coat and shoulders. He did not wear beard, whiskers, or moustaches.
+His complexion was a lifeless sallow; his skin wrinkled, his nose
+aquiline, and narrow at the top; his mouth weak and uncertain, with
+thin, bloodless lips; his gait half-mincing, half-pompous; his voice
+half-suave, half-raucous. His eyes were large and prominent, and of a
+filmy, hazel colour. As Pringle looked at the new-comer, he thought:
+"If he weren't so broad, he'd look like a dyspeptic mummy."
+
+"I have just finished telling Mr. Davenport all I heard about this
+sad affair, and I suppose you, Mr. Pringle, can now add something to
+where I left off? Mr. Davenport is most anxious to know everything."
+
+Young Pringle had then for the second time to go over the main
+features of what had taken place since he was at Dulwich last. Of
+course he was much more reticent than he had been with his father,
+and repeated nothing of what had passed between Mrs. Davenport and
+himself. It was Jerry O'Brien who had first introduced Blake's name
+into the case. Mr. Paulton had told Mr. Davenport all he knew,
+without adopting the precaution of finding out how the brother of the
+dead man felt towards the widow.
+
+Pringle had therefore no hesitation in saying that he had seen Mrs.
+Davenport, and that she, of course, would be present at the inquest
+to-morrow. He also said he had heard Thomas Blake would be present.
+He told Mr. Davenport that if he wished to call upon the widow, her
+address was at his disposal.
+
+Mr. Davenport drew himself up hurriedly, and looking furiously at
+Pringle from head to foot, as though the solicitor was the cause of
+all the misfortunes, cried, while his lips, hands, and legs were
+trembling:
+
+"_I--I go near her!_ Are you mad, young sir? Have you taken leave of
+your senses, or are you jeering at me? I go near my brother's
+murderess! Do you take me for a conspirator too? Do you think I am
+another Blake? I pity you, sir. An attorney, quotha! A man of your
+trade ought to have some little discrimination. You are for her,
+young sir! Look you: If justice can be had on this earth, by any and
+all means in my power these two shall hang side by side on the same
+gibbet, and keep the company of each other on the road to hell, and
+in hell everlastingly;" and, foaming at the mouth, he dashed away
+from the astonished pair and rushed into the house.
+
+The inquest was to be held next day at noon.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XI.
+
+                     "MRS. DAVENPORT WAS CALLED."
+
+
+The remainder of that afternoon and the early part of next day were
+devoted by young Pringle to arranging details for the inquest. He
+would have attached but little importance to the wild words and
+manner of Mr. Edward Davenport if there had not been other very
+strong elements, of suspicion in the case. There was matter for more
+than grave suspicion--there was matter for absolute alarm. The theory
+for the defence set up by Mrs. Davenport was puerile in the extreme,
+and yet he could not make any other fit in with the admitted facts of
+the case. Upon deliberate consideration, he thought less of his
+father's exposition than he had at first. His father might be right,
+but his father's conviction went no further than a supposititious
+negative. In logic one could not prove a negative; in law there was
+no prohibition. An overwhelming _alibi_ would insure an acquittal,
+but an _alibi_ was impossible in this case; and by what other means
+was it possible to establish a negative?
+
+He was anxious to ascertain one thing: Would Blake be arrested before
+or during the inquest? He made inquiries, and found that, although
+Blake's address was known and detectives were watching him, no arrest
+would be made before the coroner had taken some evidence. Pringle had
+no interest in Blake beyond the extent to which he affected Mrs.
+Davenport's case. But that was a great deal. If Blake's mouth were
+shut, Mrs. Davenport's defence would, he thought, be simpler.
+
+The day of the inquest Pringle went to Jermyn Street, and took Mrs.
+Davenport to Dulwich. She was taciturn the whole way, and said she
+had nothing to add to what she had communicated yesterday. She hardly
+spoke a word the whole way from Jermyn Street to Herne Hill.
+Pringle's spirits became more depressed as they journeyed together,
+but he had made up his mind to fight the case out to the last.
+
+The inquest was to be held at the "Wolfdog Inn," and when Pringle and
+Mrs. Davenport arrived there, a large crowd had already assembled,
+although the proceedings would not begin for some time. Pringle had
+engaged a private room for Mrs. Davenport, and to it she retired
+immediately on their arrival.
+
+It was evident from the manner of those assembled in and near the
+"Wolf-dog," that the approaching inquiry was regarded with great
+interest, and that popular feeling was aroused against the newly-made
+widow.
+
+Mrs. Davenport had entered by a back way, and had not been observed
+by the loungers. No one in the crowd knew her; but, of course, if she
+had passed through it, she would have been recognised instantly by
+her fresh weeds.
+
+For a while young Pringle stood on the steps of the inn, and the
+broken snatches of conversation which he overheard did not help to
+cheer or inspirit him: he would have taken little or no heed of the
+idle talk floating in and out of the door had he felt merely a
+professional interest in this woman; but he had just left her; he had
+been with her for nearly an hour, and although few words had passed
+between them in that time, the spell of her physical beauty had
+reasserted itself, and his chivalry was up in arms for her.
+
+While Pringle was standing on the steps of the inn, Dr. Santley and
+Alfred Paulton came up. They had walked with one another from Half
+Moon Lane.
+
+"Well," said the latter, addressing Pringle, "any good news?"
+
+The solicitor shook his head and answered:
+
+"Nothing fresh."
+
+"I thought," said Paulton, in a tone of disappointment, "that Jerry
+O'Brien would be with you. Is he not come? He said he would be here
+to-day."
+
+"I have not seen him," said Pringle. "I came out with Mrs. Davenport.
+She is upstairs in a private room. Do you know anything of Blake?
+Have you met him on the way?"
+
+"Perhaps," said Dr. Santley grimly, "he is cultivating the
+acquaintance of the police."
+
+The speakers had moved out of earshot of the crowd.
+
+"No," said Pringle, "I have ascertained that he will not be touched
+until after this day's work, anyway."
+
+As the solicitor ceased speaking, two other men approached. They,
+too, were walking together; but as they drew near the "Wolfdog," one
+of them moved off to the right, and went towards the inn door; the
+other held on towards the three men. The latter was Jerry O'Brien.
+When he came up with the little group, and had shaken hands with
+them, Pringle asked:
+
+"Who was that you were with as you came up the road?"
+
+"What! Don't you all know him? Why, who could it be but Tom Blake?"
+
+Significant looks passed between the three men. Paulton was the first
+to speak:
+
+"You don't mean to say, Jerry, that you have----"
+
+"Indeed I have. I met him on the platform at Victoria, and we came
+out in the same compartment together."
+
+Jerry O'Brien seemed as much astonished at what he had done as his
+friends.
+
+"But," urged Paulton, "you gave him the worst of characters the day
+before yesterday, and said he had something to do with this awful
+affair. Since then things have grown blacker against him, and yet you
+don't cut him! You come out here arm-in-arm with him to the very
+inquest where you say he will have to answer the ugliest questions
+which can be put to a man!"
+
+"I bar only one thing in what you have said, Alfred. I did _not_ walk
+out with him arm-in-arm. I met him quite accidentally at Victoria. I
+told you I should be here at the inquest. I was on my way here. I no
+more expected to see him than the man in the moon. He pounced on me
+suddenly, and rushed me. As a rule, I can take care of myself, but I
+admit I am no match for Blake. I am not sure I ever met his match.
+Look here, Pringle; I know you're a first-rate fellow at your work.
+You're not as old as you might be, but you're one of the best men in
+England for this kind of a job. However, if you have to tackle Tom
+Blake, he'll give you as much as you want."
+
+Jerry O'Brien spoke with heightened colour, and in a tone of intense
+irritation.
+
+This opinion was not unwelcome to Pringle's ears, for he knew that,
+no matter how big a scoundrel Blake might be, he would say nothing to
+inculpate Mrs. Davenport.
+
+"What is this Blake's manner?" asked Pringle.
+
+"Perfectly self-possessed, cool and audacious."
+
+"Is he venturesome?
+
+"He'd play for his boots or his shirt, and then for his skin."
+
+"Do you think, O'Brien, he'll get out of this with a whole skin?"
+
+"He may, for you are not his lawyer," said O'Brien, with a laugh.
+
+"It is an old form of joke," said the attorney, with a smile. "Do you
+know if he has got legal assistance?"
+
+"Legal assistance!" cried O'Brien, scornfully. "Not he. He laughed
+when telling me some fellows said he ought to get legal assistance.
+Why, my dear Pringle, he'd give the best of you thirty out of a
+hundred, and win the game by making you give misses. When is this
+thing to begin?"
+
+"Presently. Have you any notion of what he is going to say at the
+inquest?"
+
+"I asked him. I told him the paper found in the handwriting of the
+deceased would be very awkward."
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+"That it looked very awkward, no doubt; but that many people got into
+awkward positions and got out of them again."
+
+"I asked him had he been summoned as a witness, and he said naturally
+he had, as he was the last person who saw the dead man alive."
+
+"By Jove, O'Brien! Go on."
+
+"I asked him how he thought the death occurred. He said that was
+beyond him to say. He had no doubt it was accidental, and that the
+memorandum on the piece of paper written under the influence of
+delirium might be an idea created by chloroform, or while suffering
+from a relapse of the old disease which seized him at Florence years
+ago."
+
+"The same story identically. Did he say anything more?"
+
+"Yes. I asked him did anything unpleasant occur between himself and
+Mr. Davenport that night?"
+
+"What did he say to that?" eagerly asked the attorney.
+
+"He looked at me doubtfully for a moment. 'O'Brien,' he said, 'you
+know more about this than the outside public. You are interested in
+it?' I said I was interested in it very indirectly. 'Very well,
+then,' said he, 'I'm going to the inquest. You come with me and then
+you shall hear the truth as far as I know it.'"
+
+"This put me in a queer fix. I had not up to this told him I was on
+my way to this place. I could not keep the fact any longer to myself,
+so I told him I expected to find friends here, nothing more; and I
+asked him if I might communicate the substance of what he had said to
+them. He gave me full liberty. After all this, you will see I could
+not very well shake him off. When we got here he shook himself off.
+Mrs. Davenport's name was never mentioned by either of us. He did not
+show the least curiosity when I said I took an indirect interest in
+the case."
+
+A few minutes after this the four men moved into the inn, and the
+coroner having arrived, the jury were sworn, and after returning from
+Crescent House, the business of taking evidence began.
+
+After formal identification of the body by Mr. Edward Davenport, the
+witness examined was Alfred Paulton. He told his story simply and
+briefly, and answered the questions of the coroner and jury with
+precision. When what may be regarded as the examination-in-chief was
+over, Mr. Bertram Spencer, legal representative of Mr. Edward
+Davenport, put a few questions through the coroner. Paulton's replies
+were in effect:
+
+No, he had never seen Mr. Davenport alive. When Dr. Santley and he
+entered the room where Mr. Davenport lay, deceased was then dead. At
+least, so he believed. He had no acquaintance with the effects of
+chloroform. He had never been in the room with a dead person before.
+Mrs. Davenport, upon his invitation, accompanied him to his father's
+house, also in Half Moon Lane. Paulton was asked a few more
+questions, but nothing new came out.
+
+Dr. Santley was then examined. He stated that Mr. Paulton called him
+on the morning of the death. That he went immediately, as he happened
+to be dressed and disengaged at the time. He found Mr. Davenport
+quite dead. He thought life had been extinct for an hour or so; it
+was impossible to say accurately. The body was not cold. He was
+familiar with cases of spasmodic asthma. Practically it never killed
+directly; that is, one never died of the spasm. In a spasm, the
+heart, or head, or lungs, or aorta might give way, causing death. He
+had never known a case of death from spasmodic asthma, pure and
+simple.
+
+He was, of course, familiar with chloroform as an anæsthetic. He had
+once seen a case of poisoning by chloroform. That case was
+accidental. Chloroform was frequently used as a palliative in severe
+cases of asthma. A small quantity sprinkled on a napkin or
+handkerchief and held close to the nose and mouth very often afforded
+temporary relief. This treatment had no effect on the disease beyond
+mitigating the violence or putting an end to the spasm. Chloroform
+should always be administered with great care, as it had frequently
+been known to cause death. In the present case he found no napkin or
+handkerchief lying near the body. In administering chloroform for
+spasmodic asthma, the usual way was to fold a napkin so that when
+open it would resemble rudely a funnel. Into the sharper end of the
+funnel the chloroform was dropped, and then the mouth and nose of the
+patient thrust into the more open end. The handkerchief of deceased
+showed no trace of being used in the administration of chloroform,
+nor did either of the napkins found in the room. There was a very
+strong smell of chloroform about the place, and a large, a very large
+quantity had been spilled over the beard and shirt and waistcoat of
+deceased. The bottle produced was what was known as a two-ounce
+bottle. The full of it, or half the full of it would, if sprinkled
+over the shirt and beard and waistcoat, in all likelihood cause
+death, provided the natural course of the vapour upwards towards the
+mouth and nostrils was not interfered with. He could form no certain
+opinion as to the cause of death. He had declined to certify because
+he did not know. He would prefer giving no opinion. The brain, or
+aorta, or heart might have given way without displaying any external
+symptom. If the lungs had yielded, there would no doubt have been an
+outward sign. In deaths by chloroform he was not acquainted with any
+infallible outward sign. A _post-mortem_ examination would, he
+thought, determine the cause of death.
+
+A few questions were then put on behalf of Mrs. Davenport. The case
+of poisoning by chloroform which had come directly under his notice
+was unquestionably accidental. A man who suffered acutely from
+neuralgia was in the habit of using chloroform to allay pain. He was
+found dead in his bed one morning with an empty bottle, which had
+contained an ounce of the drug, by the side of his face and partly
+under the clothes. It was possible, but very unlikely, that in the
+present case the bottle might have been accidentally emptied by
+deceased. Chloroform was denser than water, and would not run out of
+such a bottle very quickly. It was most unlikely that any man in
+possession of his senses would allow an ounce and a half of that
+fluid to escape from such a bottle and fall on his beard and chest.
+Assuming he was recumbent at the time, he would be obliged to hold
+the bottle on a level with his eyes in order to pour the spirit on
+his beard, and he would have to hold the bottle in that position for
+an appreciable time. In his opinion, the poison had not got on
+deceased accidentally.
+
+Up to this point the questions had all been put through the coroner.
+Now Pringle suggested that it would be for the convenience of all
+concerned if he himself might, by favour of the coroner, directly
+interrogate the witness. This was agreed to, the coroner, before
+proceeding any further, giving notice that no further evidence would
+be taken that day, and that as soon as Dr. Santley's evidence was
+concluded, the inquiry would be adjourned pending the result of the
+_post-mortem_ examination.
+
+At this announcement Mr. Pringle expressed the greatest surprise. He
+had been curious to learn why the medical evidence had been gone into
+so early in the case. But knowing the coroner always acted with the
+greatest tact and judgment, he had made no remark at the time. For
+his part, he believed such a course, if followed, would be found very
+inconvenient.
+
+Mrs. Davenport, in whose interest he was watching the case, was
+particularly anxious to be examined to-day, as she felt the strain of
+expectation in such an ordeal very great.
+
+The coroner said if Mrs. Davenport was anxious to be examined he
+should be happy to take her evidence.
+
+In that case Mr. Pringle begged as a favour that he might be allowed
+to reserve the few questions he had to ask Dr. Santley until after
+Mrs. Davenport had been examined. To this also, after a little show
+of resistance, the coroner acceded.
+
+Pringle had resolved to have her evidence taken to-day at any risk.
+Several reasons urged him to this determination. It would look
+better, or, rather, less bad, in the eyes of the public to state that
+in a week's time her strength would be diminished by waiting and
+anxiety; and to get her examined thus, after the point at which the
+coroner had intended practically to close the evidence for that day
+would, he felt certain, tend to mitigate the rigours of the
+examination.
+
+Mrs. Davenport was called.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XII.
+
+                           ANOTHER WITNESS.
+
+
+There was a slight commotion in the dingy-room when this woman with
+the lovely figure and beautiful head and face entered. The coroner
+straightened himself and looked at her under his spectacles. The jury
+leaned forward and stared, and the few members of the general public
+who had succeeded in gaining admission to the room strained their
+necks and shuffled their feet.
+
+She advanced quietly to the table at which the coroner sat, with the
+jury on his right, and having thrown back her thick widow's veil and
+ungloved her right hand, took the Book and kissed it when the proper
+moment for doing so arrived. The coroner pointed to a chair, and told
+her she might be seated. She simply bowed and remained standing.
+
+She was pale, rigid, collected. The coroner busied himself with the
+pens, ink, and paper before him for a little while, and then asked
+her to tell them all she knew of the night and event under
+consideration.
+
+When she spoke her voice was clear and firm--as free from emotion as
+though she was repeating an old task by rote. The earlier portions of
+what she said may be partly omitted, for they have been already
+related to Alfred Paulton and Richard Pringle. For the sake of
+conciseness, the remainder of the evidence taken that day will, in
+the case of each witness, follow the order of events in narrative
+form, and not the order of events as given by the witnesses.
+
+"She and her husband arrived at Crescent House the night he died. He
+was not so well as usual, but she had known the asthma more
+troublesome. They had supper together. He ate more sparingly than
+usual. They were alone in the house. He decided upon resting on the
+couch all night. No room but her sleeping room was in anything like
+order. She was tired after the journey. They had come from Chester
+that day. Her husband suggested she should go to bed. At about ten
+o'clock she went to her room, but resolved not to lie down yet, as
+she was anxious about her husband, and resolved to see him once more,
+and put more coal on the fire before retiring finally. She sat down
+in a chair, and, being overcome with fatigue and drowsiness, fell
+asleep. She had no means of telling exactly when she fell asleep, but
+she thought she must have been about twenty minutes in her room
+before she grew unconscious.
+
+"Close to midnight she awoke with a start. It must have been the
+opening of the dining-room door that aroused her. She had left her
+bed-room door ajar, and the carpets not being down, sounds were
+exaggerated and travelled far.
+
+"She listened and heard voices--the voices of two people, two men.
+She knew the two voices. One was that of her husband--the other that
+of Mr. Thomas Blake. Both voices seemed friendly, but she did not
+catch the words. Shortly after she heard Mr. Blake distinctly say
+'Good-night,' and her husband answer 'Good-night, Blake.' She was
+quite positive these were the words spoken, and that the tones were
+friendly--yes, she was prepared to swear, cordial. Then she heard a
+man's footstep on the uncarpeted boards of the hall, and in a moment
+the front door was closed.
+
+"Some time elapsed before she went down--half-an-hour, or perhaps a
+little more. She had a reason for not going down immediately. From
+the time the front door was shut until she went down she had not
+heard a sound, not the faintest sound, in the house. A slight noise
+arising in the dining-room, where she had left Mr. Davenport, would
+be inaudible to her; but she felt almost certain no one could in that
+interval of time enter or leave the house without her hearing him.
+
+"At twenty minutes past twelve she descended and crept cautiously
+into the dining-room, wishing not to disturb her husband if he should
+be sleeping. Her husband was reclining on the couch in very nearly
+the same attitude she had left him; it was such as he always took
+when his cough prevented his lying down.
+
+"She believed he was sleeping, and stood gazing at him for a few
+seconds. Then, becoming uneasy, she did not know why, she called him
+several times, and failing to arouse him with her voice, she placed
+her hand on his shoulder. She now became grievously alarmed, for he
+had always been a remarkably light sleeper. She listened for his
+breathing, but could hear nothing.
+
+"After a few moments she became terrified, desperate, and, going to
+the front door, opened it and attracted the attention of Mr. Paulton,
+who in a short time brought Dr. Santley, who said he was dead.
+
+"Yes; she identified that bottle. It was the one in which her husband
+used to keep chloroform. He had the bottle always by him. When she
+left him to go to her room that night two hours earlier the bottle
+was more than three-quarters full of chloroform, and the cork was in
+it. Thirty or forty drops was the quantity her husband generally used
+at a time. He always spilled the chloroform into a napkin formed into
+a rude resemblance of a cornucopia, and then inhaled it. To her
+knowledge, he never used the drug internally, nor in any way but that
+described.
+
+"I have known Mr. Thomas Blake for many years. We were once secretly
+engaged to be married, but my father broke the matter off, and I
+married Mr. Davenport, who was much older than I--twenty-five or
+twenty-six years older. When Mr. Blake was a very young man he met
+Mr. Davenport abroad, so my late husband told me. It was Mr. Blake
+introduced my late husband to me. At that time Mr. Blake and I were
+secretly engaged. After this engagement was known to my father and
+broken off by him, as far as his forbidding me to see Mr. Blake, I
+still communicated with Mr. Blake and received letters from him.
+These were surreptitious communications.
+
+"Mr. Davenport then proposed to me and I refused him. Shortly after
+this I received a letter from Mr. Blake, saying there was no use in
+our continuing to hope we should one day be married, as neither of us
+had any money or the chance of getting any, and consequently we ought
+to make up our minds to resign ourselves to fate. Shortly after this
+Mr. Davenport proposed to me again and I accepted him. We were
+married a few months later, and have most of the time since then
+resided at Mr. Davenport's place near Kilcash, in the county of
+Waterford.
+
+"The terms upon which Mr. Blake gave me up will be told you by
+himself. I had nothing to do with that bargain. After an absence of a
+little time from Ireland, Mr. Blake came back and stayed occasionally
+in Kilcash, close to which my husband's house was. I saw little of
+Mr. Blake. My husband met him now and then. In those days I believe
+Mr. Blake gave me up solely for the reason mentioned in the letter of
+which I have spoken. Subsequently I found out other considerations
+had been working in Mr. Blake's mind.
+
+"My marriage with Mr. Davenport was not a love-match. A variety of
+reasons urged me into marrying him. Among these reasons I cannot
+count love. I have diligently, conscientiously done my duty by him
+for ten years. I never pretended or professed to love him. I
+respected his moral code, but his social and intellectual faculties
+did not impress, did not interest me, and certainly did not gain my
+esteem. We lived in peace and comfort. He never once quarrelled with
+me--I never with him.
+
+"I said I had a reason for not going down immediately after Mr. Blake
+left the house the other night. My reason was that generally after a
+visit from Mr. Blake, Mr. Davenport was unpleasantly excited with, as
+I even then thought, a lingering feeling of jealousy. At such times
+he never said anything harsh or unpleasant of Mr. Blake or of myself,
+but he was certain to become feverishly angry with some one or other;
+and believing that after such a journey, and with so bad a cough, it
+would be injurious to him to excite himself unduly, I kept back
+awhile.
+
+"I had the strongest possible objection to having this unhappy
+occurrence made the object of official inquiry or public comment. I
+would not have spoken as I have since I came in here for any other
+consideration in the world than my inability to tell anything that is
+not true.
+
+"I would not swear anything that was not true to save my life; no,
+nor to save the life of any one living or any one who has lived. You
+ask me did I not perjure myself when I swore at the altar to love my
+late husband. I say I did not. When I took that oath I meant to
+keep it. I meant to try and love him with all my--I will not say
+heart--with all my reason, if such an expression may be allowed. I
+was fully honest when I took the oath. When you do all you can to
+carry out your promise, and yet fail in the end, there is no flaw.
+One cannot control the inevitable.
+
+"Now that all is known, all my recent life laid bare, who is the
+richer? Does any one wonder I had no liking to expose what has been
+told of since I came into this place? You, Mr. Edward Davenport,
+have, in the moment of her sorest trial, done all you could to injure
+the character of your brother's wife. You had not the courage to
+attack her openly when she was a widow, but must shamble and crouch
+behind a hireling advocate--a creature who would pocket as clean the
+gold of any one even more leprous than himself."
+
+And before the coroner could collect himself, or stay her by gesture,
+she had swept out of the room.
+
+From beginning to end her voice had never altered in pitch. The
+concluding words were spoken in the same manner as those of the
+opening. Hence when the import of her final words began to reach the
+minds of the hearers, she had finished, and was in the act of leaving
+the room. Her words "shamble" and "crouch" were peculiarly applicable
+to Edward Davenport at the time, for no sooner did she begin her
+reference to him than she pointed him out, and he instinctively
+shrank behind his solicitor, to whom he had been prompting questions
+most offensive.
+
+When the murmur which followed the disappearance of Mrs. Davenport
+had subsided, and the coroner had somewhat recovered from his
+astonishment, Thomas Blake stood up, stepped forward to the table,
+and, laying his hand on it, said:
+
+"I am the last person who saw Mr. Louis Davenport alive. I desire to
+be examined."
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XIII.
+
+                          BLAKE'S EVIDENCE.
+
+
+When Blake stood up and tendered his testimony, a murmur of ugly
+import ran through the room. In all there were not more than fifty
+people present, but the fifty were typical of the general public, and
+already feeling ran high against Blake.
+
+He looked around contemptuously, defiantly. At one moment it seemed
+as though he was about to laugh outright. The public can endure
+anything better than derision. The murmur grew to a groan. Silence
+was called in a tyrannical tone. The coroner pushed his spectacles up
+on his forehead, and regarded Blake steadfastly for a few seconds.
+
+A square-built man, of medium height, stood before the judge. His
+hair was short, crisp, grizzled. He wore his hat jauntily in front of
+his waistcoat, and had an eye-glass fixed in his left eye. In the
+hand which held his hat he carried a stout oak stick. His hat was a
+soft felt one; his clothes light, coarse tweed, of pepper-and-salt
+colour. His brow was firm, low, and handsome; his complexion florid,
+the colour of his eyes bright blue. He wore no hair on his face but
+heavy, grizzled moustachios. His boots were patent leather. He was
+ungloved.
+
+The coroner, an old and venerable-looking man, viewed Blake with
+anything but favour.
+
+"Do I understand you to say, sir, that you are the person who saw
+deceased last before his death?"
+
+This was said in a grave, monitory-tone.
+
+"So I believe," said Blake, lightly; "and as I am most anxious to
+tell all I know, I should like to be examined before the
+adjournment."
+
+"I had determined to take no more evidence to-day than would warrant
+me in adjourning until a _post-mortem_ examination could be made."
+
+"Well, if you examine me, it may save the police trouble."
+
+The coroner looked at the inspector who was watching the case, and
+then at Pringle and Bertram Spencer, who were watching the case for
+the widow and brother of the deceased. The inspector looked down and
+smiled; Pringle looked up at the ceiling in unpleasant doubt; but
+Spencer, who represented Mr. Edward Davenport, was urgent that Blake
+should be heard. The public were also anxious Blake should be
+examined. The public were athirst for blood or scandal. In this case
+the public was unwashed and evil-visaged. Even the jury, who were not
+there by choice, had a forbidding, ghoul-like, and clayey look. The
+coroner was scrupulously clean. He was blanched and ghostly. Alfred
+Paulton looked like one suffering from a hideous nightmare. The
+inspector was grim, sardonic, rigid; the coroner's clerk sullen and
+sleepy, and seemed to think the last thing which in fairness ought to
+trouble a coroner's clerk was a coroner's inquest.
+
+In that dull, saddened room, lit by the wan February light, the only
+bright-looking figure or face was that of Thomas Blake, upon whom
+rested a strong suspicion of murder.
+
+After some talk and thought, the coroner resolved to take Thomas
+Blake's evidence, and having cautioned the witness, which made the
+witness smile in a way that provoked the public, he took down Blake's
+version of the story. Again it will be most convenient to throw the
+evidence into the form of uninterrupted narrative:
+
+"I am now thirty-six years of age. I have known the late Mr.
+Davenport for many years. I knew him abroad before I met him in
+Ireland. It was in Florence that I met him first. I was introduced to
+him by an American gentleman, a sculptor by profession. I saw a good
+deal of Mr. Davenport when I was in Florence. I am now speaking of
+eleven or twelve years ago. While I was on friendly terms with him in
+that city his mind was affected. He suffered from a delusion that
+there was a conspiracy to kill and rob him. He usually at that time
+carried valuable jewels and considerable sums of money on his person.
+I often advised him to give up that habit, but my words for some time
+produced no effect on him. Then, all at once, they seemed to operate,
+and he turned on me and said, with great fury, that if there were
+danger to his property or person he had no one to fear but me.
+
+"At that time I was a needy man, and I had borrowed money of him,
+which I have never repaid. That is so. During the time Mr. Davenport
+was ill--was suffering from this delusion or suspicion--I was
+constantly with him. I do not think he disclosed to any one but me
+the delusions or suspicions he was under. When he recovered he made
+me swear most solemnly I would never tell a soul. Then he lent me,
+or, if you prefer it, gave me, more money, and left Florence, and I
+lost sight of him until I met him in Ireland.
+
+"I do not consider my conduct in that matter dishonourable. I had
+done him a service by minding him and keeping his malady private, and
+he gave me money for my services. Yes, and for my silence, if you
+like.
+
+"I do not know whether my conduct would be considered gentlemanly. I
+am not here to give an opinion, but to state facts. If an opinion of
+gentlemanly conduct is required, why not have an attorney's clerk
+from the purlieus of Lincoln's Inn Fields as an expert? I beg your
+pardon, sir, I should not have used such words, but I heard that
+question suggested by Mr. Davenport.
+
+"I did not again see the late Mr. Davenport on the Continent. The
+next time we met was in Ireland. Yes; at that time I was paying
+attentions to Mrs. Davenport, who was then Miss Butler. When the
+deceased came on the scene, Miss Butler and I were secretly engaged
+to one another--engaged to one another without the knowledge of Miss
+Butler's father. I was then practically without means or the
+reasonable expectation of getting any; but, then, few young men in
+such a position are very particular as to whether the expectation is
+reasonable or not. If they expect, that is enough for them."
+
+Then the witness gave evidence in the same line as that of the widow.
+While this part of the inquiry was progressing, a light rain began to
+fall. The evidence of Blake went on:
+
+"It was I who broke off the engagement between Miss Butler and
+myself. By the time that occurred, Mr. Butler had discovered the
+existence of the private engagement. He was very indignant, and
+forbade me his house. This was at Scrouthea, Mr. Butler's place in
+the county of Cork.
+
+"I took no notice of Mr. Butler's prohibition. I communicated with
+Miss Butler as often as I thought fit and could find an opportunity.
+But at this time I began to feel there would be no chance of our ever
+marrying. The opposition of Mr. Butler continued undiminished. Mr.
+Davenport did not cease to importune, and at that time I lost the
+last money I had in the world on a horse.
+
+"It was not purely matters of prudence that made me desist in my
+suit. I saw now quite plainly there was no use in my continuing to
+hope. Persistence would only waste the lives of both of us. All this
+time Mr. Davenport and I were on speaking terms. I was in no fear of
+his supplanting me in the affections of Miss Butler, and he was in
+abject fear of me.
+
+"His fear of me arose from the power I had of telling of the seizure
+to which I had seen him subjected in Florence. Like all men who are a
+little odd, his great aversion was from being thought odd, and the
+notion of any one suspecting him of insanity filled him with absolute
+horror.
+
+"To be brief, I told him I had lost the last shilling I had in the
+world, and that consequently I had made up my mind Miss Butler and I
+could never more be anything else but friends, and that I would leave
+the country if I had the means. He asked me to say nothing about what
+I had seen in Florence, shook me by the hand, and lent or gave me a
+thousand pounds. With that thousand pounds I went out of the country.
+Before leaving, I wrote to Miss Butler saying all must be at an end
+between us because of my poverty, arising from my loss on the Turf.
+
+"How much did I lose on the horse? Let me see. All I had. How much
+was that? Let me see again. About seven hundred and fifty pounds."
+
+"But when Mr. Davenport had given you the thousand pounds, you were
+better off than before the race. Why, then, did you renounce Miss
+Butler?"
+
+"Yes, no doubt, I was even better off; but do you think I could
+honourably employ this man's money in taking away from him the woman
+he loved?"
+
+"And do you think it was honourable for you to give her up, and take
+hush money from your rival?"
+
+"I am here, as I said before, to state facts, not to give opinions.
+When gentlemen want opinions, they hire lawyers to give them."
+
+"You gave up the lady to whom you were engaged, and black-mailed your
+friend for a thousand pounds?"
+
+"I give up the facts to you. It is the duty of the attorney to
+embellish them. I am not, Mr. Coroner, bound to answer questions
+which are simply rhetorical."
+
+The coroner merely shook his head, and the evidence went on:
+
+"From the day I bade Mr. Davenport good-bye in Ireland, ten years
+ago, until the day of his death, I often saw Mr. Davenport, and spoke
+to him."
+
+"And you heard from him? You received communications from him?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And money?"
+
+"Yes, from time to time I received money from him by letter."
+
+"Was that money black-mail?"
+
+"I wrote him saying I was in want of money, and he sent me money
+accompanied by friendly letters. You are at liberty to call it what
+you like. If you search his papers, no doubt you will find my letters
+to him. I did not keep copies of them, nor did I keep his replies.
+
+"Yes; I had an object in calling on him the night he died. I had
+heard he was in London, or coming to London, and I got the address in
+Dulwich. I had business with him. It was to get more money from him.
+You may say 'extract more money from him' if you like.
+
+"I knocked at the door. He opened it himself. He complained of his
+asthma, said there was no servant in the house, and that Mrs.
+Davenport had gone to bed. He asked me to go into the dining-room,
+which I found as has been described, and we sat and chatted for some
+time in a most agreeable manner. We talked of indifferent things. Of
+course we spoke of Mrs. Davenport. He said, in talking of her, that
+although theirs had not been a love-match, they had got on
+wonderfully well together, and that he was quite happy, and he
+believed she was contented. He asked how long I purposed staying in
+London, and I said only a few days. Then he invited me to call on
+Mrs. Davenport and himself when they were in better trim----"
+
+"What--what is that you say?" shouted Mr. Edward Davenport, starting
+to his feet and gesticulating wildly. "It's perjury--wilful and
+corrupt perjury!"
+
+It was with the greatest difficulty Bertram Spencer could prevail
+upon his client to resume his seat and keep silent. After a while
+Blake was allowed to continue his evidence:
+
+"I promised to come the next evening but one, and he said that would
+suit them admirably. Then he smiled and said he was sure this was not
+merely a visit of ceremony, and that he supposed I would allow him to
+be of any use I chose. I told him he was quite right, that I had no
+money, and that two hundred pounds would be of the greatest service
+to me at that moment. He said he had not so much by him, but that he
+would give me a hundred now and another hundred when I called the
+next day but one. 'That will be,' said he, 'the 19th of February.' He
+added that he'd make a memorandum of it, and he did so in the
+pocket-book which has been produced here by the police. After that
+nothing passed but 'Good-nights' on both sides, and then I went away,
+closing the front door after me."
+
+Here reference was made to the pocket-book, but no such entry as that
+described could be found. There was no such entry in the book.
+
+Then, having cautioned the witness again, the coroner said two leaves
+of the book had been torn out, one of which had been found. On the
+leaf found appeared words of the gravest import. They were:
+
+"_Pretended death. Blake gone. He emptied chloroform over me--held me
+down. Can't stir. Dying_."
+
+Could witness give any explanation of this?
+
+"No; I can give no explanation of that writing. It is perfectly
+untrue. When I left the presence of the man now dead he seemed to be
+in as good health as his asthma would allow. My only way of
+accounting for what followed is that, after my leaving, he
+administered some chloroform to himself. This disturbed his reason,
+and he suffered from a return of the old delusion he had suffered in
+Florence----"
+
+"And of which you are the only living person who knows, or ever did
+know, anything?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And further?"
+
+"And further, that while suffering under this delusion, and being
+greatly excited and rendered tremulous by it, he accidentally spilled
+the remainder of the chloroform over himself."
+
+"He did not show any suicidal tendency, or say anything of suicide
+while you were present?"
+
+"No; on the contrary, he seemed in very good spirits, and spoke quite
+cheerfully of the future. By-the-way, I forgot to mention one saying
+of his. When asking me to come and see Mrs. Davenport and himself on
+the 19th, he said, 'You know I am not afraid of a rival now. We are
+none of us as young as we were ten years ago, and if you have kept
+single with the notion of marrying a rich widow--she will be rich,
+Blake--you will have a weary time to wait; for asthma gives a long
+lease to life."
+
+Here the inquiry was adjourned for four days in order to give time
+for the _post-mortem_ examination.
+
+As the people began to leave their places, Richard Pringle whispered
+to Jerry O'Brien:
+
+"That man Blake has put his head into the halter and kicked away the
+barrel from under his feet."
+
+When Pringle and O'Brien got out of that room in the "Wolfdog," they
+looked everywhere for Alfred Paulton. He was not to be found. He had
+disappeared, leaving no word or trace behind him.
+
+As Blake left the inn, two men, dressed like stable-helpers, came up
+to him and said they arrested him on suspicion of being concerned in
+the murder of the late Mr. Louis Davenport.
+
+The rain was now falling in torrents.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XIV.
+
+                        ALFRED PAULTON'S WALK.
+
+
+It was now pitch dark. The rain rushed downward through the still air
+in overwhelming sheets. Through the leafless trees it fell with a
+shrill, constant hiss. On the open road it beat with a loud dull
+rolling sound, sometimes like the dull murmur of distant traffic,
+sometimes like, the distant roar of a mighty concourse of people.
+
+Out beyond the lamps of the town there was not a glimmer of light
+to be seen anywhere. If one turned one's face upwards, the source
+of the rain seemed not to be more than a few feet overhead. If one
+turned one's face to the ground, a thick heavy vapour, born of the
+shattered drops, rose warm against one's mouth and eyes. There
+was no noise abroad but that of the incessant deluge. If it had
+abated or increased, one would have thought it was the result of a
+thunder-storm. But it did not alter in character or decree. It was a
+constant torrent, not a fitful flood.
+
+It was between six and seven o'clock when Alfred Paulton found
+himself walking on a lonely road under this fierce downpour. How he
+got there he did not know. He had a confused memory of what had taken
+place within the past few hours. He had no clue whatever to where he
+now was. He had no more than a blurred image of the scene in that
+low, dingy, ill-lighted room at the "Wolfdog Inn." Even when Mrs.
+Davenport was giving evidence his attention had been but feebly
+aroused. He had felt drowsy, jaded. He then told himself that it
+would be much better for him to go home and have some rest and sleep.
+He had been without proper sleep for three nights. He had been too
+much excited to get to sleep soundly, and when for a time he fell
+into an uneasy doze, he had awakened with a shudder and a start from
+some dire form of nightmare, in which familiar forms and faces had
+been cruelly jumbled in hideous events.
+
+But on this unknown road, and now, after wandering he knew not how
+long, all at once he was smitten with a sharp impression of his
+present situation. He moved his eyes this way and that in quick
+anxiety. It is not possible to say he looked in the sense that
+looking takes in objects by means of sight. He could hear and feel
+the rain, and smell the heavy damp vapour rising from the ground,
+from the flooded road at his feet. But if sight had been painlessly
+taken from him at that moment, he would have been unconscious of
+loss.
+
+A feeling of desolation and infrangible solitude came upon him.
+
+He paused in his walk and listened. His ears caught nothing but the
+muffled hiss of the rain through the air, the angry-beat of it among
+the leafless trees, and the slashing singing of it on the flooded
+ground. The effect of it was an awful combination of the darkness of
+the grave, an inviolate solitude, and a deluge lacking merciful power
+to overwhelm.
+
+He would have greeted any companion with joy. The society of the
+humblest beast, the most abject man, would have cheered him almost
+beyond the bounds of reason.
+
+The completeness of his isolation was not due merely to external
+forces combined with physical and mental exhaustion. The hollow
+spaces of his imagination were filled with ghostly hints of an
+unendurable crime. In the caverns of his thought was no pageant of
+people or of things. No words or echoes of words sounded through the
+dim, unexplorable vaults. Everywhere within there was the look of
+sacrilege by bloodshed, the faint unendurable replication of dying
+groans. The marks of a red hand were on all the walls, the last moans
+of a murdered man filled the concave gloom.
+
+He had heard that man Blake give his evidence freely, almost
+jauntily. He had seen that other man lying dead in the disordered
+room. As he had listened to the evidence of Blake, he had felt the
+air about his head grow cold with awe, while his whole frame froze
+with terror. All the people in the room where that accursed tale was
+told believed instinctively that this man, talking with such odious
+glibness, was a perjurer and an assassin.
+
+Ugh! It was horrible--too horrible for a sane human being to dwell
+upon! He would give all he had in the world to be able to banish the
+memory of the past few days from his mind. But a curse had fallen
+upon him, and now no other event of all his life would stay with him
+for one brief minute to keep him away from this awful scene.
+
+When in that room where the inquest was held he had felt very cold.
+Now he was hot, uncomfortably hot. This was strange; for there he had
+been under cover, and there had been a fire in the room. Here not
+only was he in the open air, but under a fierce downpour of rain.
+Indeed it was one of the greatest storms of rain he had ever been out
+in. The rain was useful in one way--it would cool him.
+
+Ah, that was much better! To take off his hat and let the cool rain
+beat on his bare head was a luxury--a delicious luxury. It was indeed
+a luxury such as he had wished for in vain a little while ago; for it
+not only took away the great, unaccountable heat from which he would
+otherwise have suffered most severely, but, better a thousandfold, it
+kept his mind from running on the events of a few days back, and this
+day in particular. The effect of rain falling on his bare head was to
+banish thought from the brain, and give the brain rest.
+
+What an extraordinary thing the brain was! Awhile ago he had been
+able to recall hardly any of the circumstances of the inquest; then
+they all rushed into his mind, causing him great disquietude; and now
+the mere falling of rain on his uncovered head had put him into a
+wholesome and almost pleasant state of mind!
+
+The heat was gradually getting less. Yes, there could be no mistake
+about that. A few minutes since it seemed as though it would take
+hours to reduce the temperature to the degree it had already reached.
+Keeping the hat off was no longer necessary. In fact, it was no
+longer comfortable to go uncovered. He would put on his hat.
+
+He was wet through now--thoroughly wet. He must have been soaked
+before that great heat came upon him. It was very extraordinary that
+he should feel so hot while the water was absolutely running down
+under his clothes.
+
+Ah, a chill now! Unmistakably a chill, and he could see no sign of
+human habitation anywhere--no place which could afford him shelter.
+In fact, he could make nothing whatever out except the rain, and that
+was revealed to him by the sense of touch, not by the sense of sight.
+How cold the rain was, too! He had never felt rain so cold. The air
+must then be twenty degrees colder than it had been a few minutes
+ago. He had never until now experienced so sudden a fall of
+temperature.
+
+He was shivering, too. His teeth were chattering. How delighted he
+would be to find any kind of shelter, and a good fire to warm himself
+at! This was very lonely and wretched. He was hardly able to walk
+now, and yet with his present chill anything was better than to
+stand. The thought of sitting down was out of the question. No one
+but a madman would sit down in such rain, and with clothes soaked
+through. He had been miserably wrong to uncover his head for so long
+a time. To that foolish act must be attributed this chill. Ugh! he
+was barely able to stagger along. This was the most dismal night he
+had ever passed in all his life.
+
+But uncovering his head to the rain was not the only foolish thing he
+had done this night. Had he not wandered sillily along some roads--he
+knew not where--until he had lost his way? Now he was far from
+lamplight--where he knew not; whither to turn he could not decide if
+he had a choice. At present he every now and then ran up against the
+hedge, and this was the only thing which told him he was walking on a
+road.
+
+He wondered what o'clock it was. When did he leave that dreadful room
+where the inquest had been held? He could not tell, but it was the
+moment Blake's evidence was over. The moment Blake moved from the
+table at which the coroner sat, he had stolen away, and, he thought,
+run a good while, until he was out of breath. How long that was since
+he could not tell--could not guess.
+
+Merciful Heavens! Suppose the night was yet young--suppose it was now
+no more than midnight, or eleven, or ten o'clock--what was to become
+of him? There would be no daylight until close to seven. Could it be
+that he would have to wander on thus for eight or ten hours more? The
+thought was absurd. He should drop down of exhaustion, of cold, long
+before that time.
+
+Cold! Why, what could be the meaning of this? Already the feeling of
+cold was passing away, and he felt quite warm--very hot. This was an
+improvement on the sensation a little while ago.
+
+No matter whether he felt hot or cold now, this day had done him
+one invaluable service. It had cured him of any romantic feeling he
+had had for that strangely beautiful woman. Now all that had happened
+in that room where the inquest had been held came back vividly to
+him. Murder had been done, and there could be no doubt in the mind
+of any reasonable man that Blake had done the awful deed, and that
+she---- No, no; he mustn't think that even now. It was plain, at all
+events, that Blake had once been loved by her, and there was nothing
+to show that she was now indifferent to Blake. Had she not supported
+his absurd theory respecting the death of the man who had been
+murdered?
+
+The heat was becoming bad again--worse than ever. His head was
+burning. It felt as though a cap of tight-fitting metal pressed upon
+it. The cold of a little time back was hard to endure, but it seemed
+a positive pleasure compared with this awful sensation of bursting at
+the temples. He must have relief some way, any way, no matter at what
+cost in the future.
+
+Off with the hat again. The rain did not cool so quickly or so
+effectually, but it afforded great alleviation. There was no positive
+sense of pleasure from it now--only a dulling, deadening of a feeling
+which was not exactly pain, but gave rise to a helpless, lethargic
+state of brain.
+
+His limbs were heavier than they had yet seemed, and he had great
+difficulty in persuading himself that the water which rose no higher
+than an inch on the road was not tenacious mud half a foot deep.
+
+Keep on thus for several hours! Impossible! One might as well expect
+to walk for the same time on red-hot ploughshares.
+
+Oh, he felt sick and weary beyond endurance! No light to be
+seen--nothing whatever visible. And along this road no succour was
+likely to come, while the rain poured down as though a second
+destruction of earth by water was at hand.
+
+What!--cold again so soon! Distracting! Maddening!
+
+Ah, this was fever--fever of some awful kind--and no help at hand. He
+could not keep on another hour. Bah!--not half-an-hour.
+
+Merciful heavens, what was this? Lights and the sounds of horses and
+the shouts of men!
+
+He felt himself knocked down. With a prodigious effort he staggered
+to his feet and cried out:
+
+"Help!--for heavens sake, help!"
+
+Succour had arrived at the last moment.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XV.
+
+                 "I SHALL BE READY FOR MY DEATH WHEN
+                       THEY ARE READY FOR IT!"
+
+
+That evening, when Richard Pringle ascertained Alfred Paulton had
+left the "Wolfdog Inn," he came to the conclusion that he had
+hastened home with an account of the day's proceedings. He resolved
+to go and seek Mrs. Davenport at once.
+
+He had ordered a carriage to be in readiness to take her and him back
+to London. Since she had finished giving her evidence, she had
+remained in the private room upstairs. The rain was now falling
+heavily.
+
+As the solicitor stood on the doorstep under the portico bidding
+Jerry O'Brien good-evening, he saw the two men, who looked like
+stable-helpers, go up to Tom Blake and speak to him. He had noticed
+these men during the day, and when he saw them speak to Blake, he
+knew what their business with him was.
+
+On a motion from one of the two, a cab drew up a little way from the
+door of the inn. Tom Blake and the two men got into it, and the cab
+drove off. Then Pringle went back into the inn, spoke a few words to
+the police inspector, and sent up word to Mrs. Davenport that he and
+the carriage were ready.
+
+In a few minutes she came down, looking as calm and impassible as
+ever. With some commonplace remarks about the rain, he handed her in,
+and then took his seat beside her.
+
+For a while they drove in perfect silence. She broke it by asking
+what had occurred since she left the room downstairs.
+
+He briefly told her the substance of Blake's evidence, softening down
+the sentimental portions as far as they had relation to herself, but
+setting forth fully and fairly the salient points of his history.
+
+She listened without a word. She had heard the coroner say the
+inquiry would not close that day. She therefore knew nothing final
+was to be decided immediately. But although Pringle knew she was
+aware of this, he was surprised that upon his ending she said
+nothing, made no comment, seemed but sparingly interested, although
+she listened with attention. At last he thought best to volunteer
+something.
+
+"I am afraid," he said, "that although we may be able to corroborate
+every word of Mr. Blake's, as far as facts are concerned, his
+hypothesis will not have much influence with the jury."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Did you know Mr. Blake got money from Mr. Davenport on the very
+night of the 17th?"
+
+In the darkness of the carriage here, he was free from the spell of
+her beauty, and spoke in a purely professional tone.
+
+"I did," she answered. "Mr. Blake told me."
+
+"That admission took me by surprise. It would greatly facilitate the
+discharge of my duty towards you if you would even _now_ take me a
+little more fully into your confidence."
+
+"There is nothing farther to tell--nothing further to conceal," she
+said, in a slow, emotionless voice.
+
+He threw himself back, and did not speak at once. At length he moved
+uneasily in his place, and said, after deliberation:
+
+"I appealed to you once, and cautioned you several times. I may now
+tell you, as a matter of certainty, not as a matter of my own
+personal opinion, but of ascertained fact, that the theory of what I
+_must_ now call the defence will not stand a trial, and that a trial
+there will be."
+
+"I have nothing to add," she said, in an unmoved tone.
+
+"Up to this I have not told you the most unpleasant, the most
+significant and alarming fact of all."
+
+"What is that?"--in the same voice.
+
+"I hope you will try and face the horrible position with fortitude. I
+spoke of a trial as now inevitable."
+
+"You mean something more than this inquest?"--in the same tone, but a
+little more deliberately.
+
+"Yes. This is only an inquiry into the place, time, and cause of
+death. No one is on trial for a crime as yet."
+
+"You mean"--without any variation in accent--"that some one will be
+tried for the murder of my late husband?"
+
+He was silent.
+
+She put her next question in a perfectly cold and steady manner:
+
+"You mean that I will be tried for the murder of my late husband?"
+
+"Great heavens--no!" he cried, throwing himself forward with a
+violent start. "Who put such a monstrous thought into your head?"
+
+Although the thought had frequently occurred to him, from her lips,
+and now, it came to him with a powerful shock.
+
+"You."
+
+"I--I put such a thought into your head! Mrs. Davenport, you cannot
+mean what you say? It is too dreadful!"
+
+"I will not say you ever put the thought in as precise words as I
+have used; but at our first meeting it was in your mind, and at our
+first meeting it entered my mind that you considered it at all events
+possible that I might be tried for the murder of my husband. You need
+not be afraid of shocking me. Nothing can shock me now. What is the
+important fact you are keeping back? I wish to know it at once."
+
+"Mr. Blake has been arrested this evening. He was arrested as he left
+the 'Wolfdog Inn.'"
+
+"Is that all?"
+
+"All! Why, it is a matter of life and death with him, as things now
+look. He must have been mad to give the evidence he did to-day."
+
+"And when am I to be arrested? Or perhaps I am already arrested, and
+the driver is a policeman?"
+
+"No, no. Nor is there, as far as I can see, a likelihood of anything
+so horrible taking place."
+
+"Neither the trial nor the scaffold would have the least horror for
+me now, I shall be ready for my death when they are ready for it.
+This is my place--for the present, at all events."
+
+They had arrived in Jermyn Street, and she alighted.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XVI.
+
+                             THE VERDICT.
+
+
+It was a strange room, large and bright and fresh. The air of it was
+cool without being cold. After all, was it a strange room? Had he not
+seen it, or something like it, before! But perhaps it was in a dream
+he had seen that other room. A dream? Much of what had been resembled
+a dream. Did not all the past look like a dream? How was one to know
+whether the past had been dream or reality? He could not say. At all
+events, he was too tired to decide any difficult question. He would
+go to sleep now--at least he would shut his eyes. That bright, cold
+glitter of winter sunlight pained his eyes.
+
+If before falling asleep, and while his eyes were thus closed and his
+body at rest, he could get a drink of cool, sweet water, how
+deliciously refreshing it would be!
+
+How hot he was! It wasn't an agreeable kind of heat, but a dull,
+dead, smouldering heat that parched his skin, his tongue, his bones,
+his marrow.
+
+Why, it was hotter than it had been last night on the road!
+
+On the road! Last night! What did all that mean? Oh, he was too tired
+to think any more. Let him try to rest--to sleep.
+
+Dusk. Yes, there could be no doubt the daylight was fading. At this
+time of the year the days were short. He had been asleep some time,
+for the last thing he remembered was that it was full daylight. He
+was then in some difficulty as to this room. He was under the
+impression it was a strange room. Could a more absurd idea enter the
+mind of man? Is it possible he could not identify his own bed-room?
+What would come next? What should he forget next? His own name, no
+doubt.
+
+The thirst continued. It was even greater than it had been. He could
+get water if he went to the dressing-table. But, strange as it might
+seem, he had the greatest desire to go to the table and drink the
+water, but not the will. How was that? Why did he not spring out of
+bed and quench his thirst?
+
+It was easy to think of springing out of bed, but quite impossible to
+do anything of the kind. Why, he could not move his feet or hands
+with ease. Ah, yes, it was quite plain! He had been ill--very ill.
+That would account for all--for the confusion in awaking, the thirst,
+the weakness. How long had he been ill, and what had ailed him?
+
+This thirst was no longer tolerable. He must drink.
+
+"Water!"
+
+How thin and weak his voice sounded! It was almost ridiculous. If
+anything could ever again be ridiculous, his voice was. But nothing
+could ever again be ridiculous. Everything was serious and dull, and
+would so continue from that time forward. It was strange no one came.
+If he had been ill they would hardly leave him alone. He must try
+again.
+
+"Water!"
+
+Instantly a figure stood between his eyes and the fading light in the
+window.
+
+"You are better, Alfred?"
+
+"Yes, Madge. Water."
+
+His sister poured out some, and handed him the glass. He drank with
+avidity, and felt refreshed.
+
+"I have been very ill, Madge?"
+
+"Yes, Alfred; but you will be all right in a short time, now that you
+have begun to mend. So Dr. Santley says."
+
+Dr. Santley! Ah, that name set memory afoot. He lay pondering, still
+unable to see distinctly the matters he wished.
+
+"How long have I been ill, Madge?"
+
+"Several days."
+
+"I have been unconscious?"
+
+"Yes. But you are sure to be quite well in a little time."
+
+"I am not anxious about the future. I am trying to recall the past."
+
+"You are not to speak much, and you are on no account to excite
+yourself."
+
+"I must be in possession of the facts of the past before I can rest.
+Tell me what has happened--what happened just before I fell ill? I
+have had fever, and been delirious."
+
+"You have; but you must keep quiet, or I shall go away."
+
+"I must know what took place before my illness, if I am to be at
+ease. There was some trouble about the law--some inquiry. What was
+it?"
+
+"Dr. Santley has forbidden me to speak of that matter. You have been
+very ill, and your recovery depends on your keeping from excitement."
+
+"I must know. I shall become delirious again if you do not tell me."
+
+"My dear, dear Alfred, I cannot--I must not. You don't fancy for a
+moment I am going to help you back into illness! You shall know all
+in a little time; and now I must run away and tell father and mother
+and Edith of the good change in you."
+
+"Send Edith to me, or mother. Either will tell me."
+
+"You are not to see any one but me to-day until Dr. Santley comes.
+There's a dear fellow--rest content until I come back to you. Already
+you have talked too much."
+
+She left the room in spite of his cry of protest and entreaty.
+
+In a slow, hopeless, helpless way his mind began working again.
+Little by little some figures of the past reappeared, but not the
+central one, the main incident. He knew an event of eminent
+unpleasantness had occurred, and he knew it did not concern any
+member of his own family. He knew it did not concern himself closely,
+and yet that he had a profound interest in it. Santley was mixed up
+with it in one way or another, but how he could not tell. The law had
+been invoked; but in what manner or in whose regard was concealed
+from him. He had a faint memory of a crowded room. Only one figure
+stood out boldly, and that Tom Blake's. He knew his name, and could
+describe him with minute accuracy; but why this man and his name were
+so clearly defined in his recollection he could not tell. Around
+Blake shone a fierce light; but whence it came or why it was there he
+could not say. He felt Blake had to do with the legal matter; but in
+what relation or capacity he could not determine.
+
+At length he resolved to give up trying to solve the riddle, and to
+go to sleep again. It seemed better to go asleep and forget
+everything than to lie awake remembering imperfectly.
+
+A shaded lamp was burning in the room when he again awoke. His mind
+was now more vigorous and clear. Still there was great confusion and
+uncertainty. He called, and his sister Madge got up and came to him
+with a basin of arrowroot. She told him that Dr. Santley had called
+and seen him while he slept, and that he was going on very well
+indeed, but that there was no use in his asking questions; and, in
+fact, that he was not to talk at all, but rest perfectly quiet, take
+his food and go to sleep again--sleep and food being his chief needs
+now.
+
+Young Paulton protested and expostulated, but in vain; so he was left
+in the same state of vague uncertainty which he was in when he awoke.
+
+Next morning, as soon as he opened his eyes, all that had been lost
+came back to him in a flash. Nothing was wanting. The repose of the
+night and the food had invigorated his brain, and allowed it to fill
+in the gaps which existed the night before.
+
+Madge was not in the room when he awoke. The moment she came back he
+said:
+
+"My memory was quite cloudy yesterday; it is as clear as ever it was
+to-day. I now remember everything. I can recall my walk in the rain.
+How long have I been ill?"
+
+"This is the sixth day."
+
+"The sixth day! Good heavens! Six days! Then the inquest is over?"
+
+"Yes. You must not talk much or excite yourself at all. You may,
+however, talk a little more than yesterday, for you are getting on
+famously."
+
+"For goodness' sake, tell me about the inquest, and don't talk of me
+and my health. No, I won't taste breakfast until you tell me. What
+was the verdict?"
+
+"Dr. Santley said you might be answered questions to-day if you
+promised not to excite yourself. Do you promise to keep calm,
+Alfred?"
+
+"Oh, yes. Go on."
+
+"The verdict was that he committed suicide while of unsound mind."
+
+"Suicide while of unsound mind! Are you sure?"
+
+"Oh, perfectly."
+
+"Does Santley know the verdict?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"And what does he say?"
+
+"That it is the most extraordinary case he ever read or heard of."
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XVII.
+
+                      JERRY O'BRIEN'S PROPHECY.
+
+
+When Dr. Santley called that day, he found his patient in a state of
+agitation. Madge Paulton had given her brother an outline of the
+proceedings at the second sitting of the inquest; but she could not
+tell him all, and she considered it would be injudicious, to say the
+least of it, to read a report of the trial aloud to him until she got
+permission from the doctor. Besides, the report was gruesome and full
+of technicalities.
+
+No sooner had Dr. Santley entered the sick room than Alfred began a
+string of impatient and somewhat incoherent questions; so Santley
+thought it better to allay the excitement at the expense of a little
+fatigue to his patient, still he absolutely forbade the long report
+to be read to him.
+
+"But," said the doctor, "there is a leading article in the paper, and
+the middle paragraph of that gives briefly an account of the case
+from the point at which the enthralling interest begins. You may read
+that aloud to your brother, Miss Paulton, and then I insist upon his
+remaining almost silent for the remainder of the day."
+
+When Santley was gone, Madge fetched the newspaper, and read aloud:
+
+"We now reach the most extraordinary point in this extraordinary
+case. The evidence here is sufficient to convince the most
+incredulous. Beyond all doubt, when Mr. Blake left the house there
+was nothing unusual the matter with the deceased unfortunate
+gentleman. After that it would seem that he must have had an attack
+of the old mania respecting which Mr. Blake gave evidence. While
+under this morbid influence he must have conceived the idea of
+committing suicide, for he wrote on one leaf of his pocket-book these
+words:
+
+"'_I will not endure this any longer. They have conspired to rob and
+murder me. But I will evade them for good. In ten seconds more I
+shall empty the chloroform on my beard. In twenty minutes I shall be
+dead_.---Louis Davenport.'
+
+"This is unmistakably in the handwriting of the deceased. The piece
+of paper on which it is written corresponds with a blank in Mr.
+Davenport's pocket-book. The writing was done with a metal pencil,
+and the paper is remarkably tough. When he had finished the writing,
+he carried out his threat of spilling the chloroform over his beard
+and waistcoat. Between this and the time during which the drug began
+to exercise its fatal influence he must have changed his mind, not,
+indeed, as regards suicide, but as regards his confession; for he
+swallowed the piece of paper on which the confession was written, and
+wrote on another leaf in the same book these words:
+
+
+"'_Pretended death. Blake gone. He emptied chloroform on me. Can't
+stir. Dying_.'
+
+
+"At the _post-mortem_ examination the former paper was produced. It
+had been masticated and swallowed. The other leaf of the pocket-book
+had been found in the waistcoat-pocket of deceased. The certainty of
+the former leaf having been written first rests on the fact that the
+latter leaf has on it a faint but sufficient trace of the writing on
+the former, the degree of force used in writing the longer
+communication being sufficient to mark the leaf following. The
+_post-mortem_ clearly proved that chloroform was the cause of death."
+
+This was astonishing news. By it not only was all shadow of suspicion
+removed from Mrs. Davenport, but Blake was vindicated. The stories
+told by Mrs. Davenport and Blake had been confirmed in the most
+amazing and unexpected manner. It seemed little short, if at all
+short, of a miracle. This strange account of deceased's mental
+illness in Florence was true. Who placed any value whatever on it
+when it was given by Blake on oath? It then seemed nothing better
+than an audacious and unnecessary lie. It had turned Alfred sick
+while he listened to it. As he heard that self-possessed, aggressive
+man give evidence, he felt the toils closing round the unhappy woman.
+Now, in all likelihood, these toils had for ever vanished into air,
+and Mrs. Davenport was as free from suspicion of complicity in her
+husband's murder as though the two had never in all their lives met.
+
+He asked his sister if she knew anything about Mrs. Davenport. Madge
+had an idea that Mrs. Davenport was still staying at Jermyn Street.
+Young Paulton asked nothing about Blake. He was not concerned about
+him.
+
+It was very hard to be obliged to lie inactive here while---- He
+paused to think. While what? That question staggered him. The
+interest in the inquest was all over, and no other trial was likely
+to arise out of the matter. Accident had for a while connected him
+with some affairs of Mrs. Davenport, and now that accident was at an
+end. There was no longer any chance of his being of use to her.
+Nothing could be more natural than that she had forgotten him by this
+time. In the excitement and heat of that ordeal there was nothing
+more likely than that she should forget him absolutely.
+
+But the case was different with him. He could not forget her. He
+could never forget her--no, not if he lived a hundred years. Were
+they destined to meet never again? That was a dreary question to ask
+and have to leave unanswered, while he lay weak and powerless here.
+
+He should get well no doubt in time, but this in time was such a
+weary, dead, tedious thing. It would be infinitely depressing and
+irksome to have to live here day after day pulling up strength. How
+was it possible for him to recover if his mind were haunted by doubts
+and anxieties?
+
+Doubts about what? Anxieties about whom? He was not in love with this
+woman. The notion of being in love with her was absurd. He had seen
+her but on three occasions, and then the meetings had been brief and
+full of anything but tenderness. He had heard and thought much of her
+in the few days since their first meeting. He should never forget
+their first meeting. Could he ever blot out from his memory the regal
+beauty and pose of her as she stood in that dreary hall and pointed
+out the room in which her husband lay dead? Ah, well, nothing could
+come of such thinking now!
+
+He wondered where was Blake at this moment, while he lay there on his
+back looking at the thin light of the February day. However, there
+was nothing for it but to submit. He was too weak to stand. He must
+try and rest contented for a while. But Dr. Santley did not think he
+would be able to move about for a month, and even then not much, as
+the weather would be greatly against him.
+
+He was this day allowed to see his family for a little while. Before
+his father left the room he had got his promise to call at Jermyn
+Street and make inquiries. Next evening his father came up to his
+room. He had called at Jermyn Street, and seen Mrs. Davenport. She
+was quite well: was sorry to hear Alfred had been ill. Mr. Pringle
+had told her. Her plans were not quite settled, but she thought she
+should leave London for the Continent in a few days. She did not say
+what part of the Continent she purposed going to. That was all.
+
+The person outside the family whom Alfred wished to see first was
+Jerry O'Brien; and, for reasons of friendliness towards Alfred, and
+of something a good deal more than friendliness towards Madge
+Paulton, Jerry was not slow to come.
+
+The younger Paultons were not remarkable for beauty. The father was
+much better-looking than the son--the mother than either of the
+daughters. Father and mother were both decidedly good-looking. Alfred
+was of the average size of man, upright, well-made, healthy-looking
+when in health, fresh-coloured, with light hair and beard touched
+here and there with red, full blue eyes, long nose, white, broad
+forehead, and useful, large, well-formed hands. He was good-tempered,
+easygoing, affectionate; but when once roused or awakened, he was
+impetuous, headlong, and anything but clear-headed.
+
+Edith, the elder sister, was short, plump, saucy, often pert,
+blue-eyed, brown-haired, resolute, aggressive at times, sprightly,
+short-nosed, with small feet and hands, and no mean opinion of herself,
+inclined to be discontented, and to under-estimate others.
+
+Madge was tall, thin, dull-complexioned, quiet, unselfish,
+undemonstrative, good-natured, brown-eyed, and not good-looking by
+any means. Her amiability was extraordinary, her sympathy vast. Jerry
+O'Brien was not a lady's man. He held that sort of person in
+contempt. But of one thing he was quite sure--that he was disposed,
+anxious, to be one lady's man, and that lady was Madge Paulton.
+
+As soon as Alfred and Jerry were alone, the former began making
+inquiries about Mrs. Davenport.
+
+"She's in Jermyn Street yet," said Jerry. "I saw her this morning as
+I came along. I don't think they have let Blake out of gaol yet. It's
+a pity they ever should do so. I don't think there could be any act
+of Christian charity more acceptable to heaven than to hang him. I'd
+do it myself with pleasure if I could manage it without touching the
+blackguard's neck. The gallows never lost such a chance as this was.
+Why, during the first day of the inquest I could hear them knocking
+the nails into a gibbet, and now, or in a day or two, he will be a
+free man. It's a horrible shame!"
+
+"I don t care about him. I want to hear something of her."
+
+"Oh, you do--do you? Not quite cured yet. Well, I'll tell you my
+opinion. She has announced her intention of going to the Continent.
+She will wait until he is discharged, and then be off with
+him---- Alfred, what's the matter? He has fainted!"
+
+
+
+
+                            END OF VOL. I.
+
+
+
+
+                         * * * * * * * * * *
+           CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS, CRYSTAL PALACE PRESS.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Tempest-Driven (Vol. I of 3), by Richard Dowling
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 42750 ***