The ghostly room, in the Early William Morris manner, looked cosey and even homelike when the lamp was lit, when the dusky blue curtains were drawn, and a monster of the deep--one of the famous Oxford soles, larger than you ever see them elsewhere--smoked between Maitland and Barton.
Beside the latter stood a silver quart pot, full of "strong," a reminiscence of "the old coaching days," when Maitland had read with Barton for Greats. The invalid"s toast and water wore an air of modest conviviality, and might have been mistaken for sherry by anyone who relied merely on such information as is furnished by the sense of sight The wing of a partridge (the remainder of the brace fell to Barton"s lot) was disposed of by the patient; and then, over the wine, which he did not touch, and the walnuts, which he tried nervously to crack in his thin, white hands, Maitland made confession and sought advice.
It was certainly much easier talking to Barton than to Bielby, for Barton knew so much already, especially about the _Hit or Miss_; but when it came to the story of the guardianship of Margaret, and the kind of prospective engagement to that young lady, Barton rose and began to walk about the room. But the old beams creaked under him in the weak places; and Barton, seeing how much he discomposed Maitland, sat down again, and steadied his nerves with a gla.s.s of the famous St. Gatien"s port.
Then, when Maitland, in the orderly course of his narrative, came to the finding of poor d.i.c.k Shields" body in the snow-cart, Barton cried, "Why, you don"t mean to say that was the man, the girl"s father? By George, I can tell you something about _him_! At the inquest my partner, old Munby, made out--"
"Has there been an inquest already? Oh, of course there must have been,"
said Maitland, whose mind had run so much on Margaret"s disappearance that he had given little of his thoughts (weak and inconsecutive enough of late) to the death of her father.
"Of course there has been an inquest Have you not read the papers since you were ill?"
Now, Maitland had the common-room back numbers of the _Times_ since the day of his return from Devonshire in his study at that very moment But his reading, so far, had been limited to the "Agony Column" of the advertis.e.m.e.nts (where he half hoped to find some message), and to all the paragraphs headed "Strange Occurrence" and "Mysterious Disappearance." None of these had cast any light on the fortunes of Margaret.
"I have not seen anything about the inquest," he said. "What verdict did they bring in? The usual one, I suppose--"Visitation," and all that kind of thing, or "Death from exposure while under the influence of alcoholic stimulants.""
"That"s exactly what they made it," said Barton; "and I don"t blame them; for the medical evidence my worthy partner gave left them no other choice. You can see what he said for yourself in the papers."
Barton had been turning over the file of the _Times_, and showed Maitland the brief record of the inquest and the verdict; matters so common that their chronicle might be, and perhaps is, kept stereotyped, with blanks for names and dates.
"A miserable end," said Maitland, when he had perused the paragraph.
"And now I had better go on with my story? But what did you mean by saying you didn"t "blame" the coroner"s jury?"
"Have you any more story? Is it not enough? I don"t know that I should tell you; it is too horrid!"
"Don"t keep anything from me, please," said Maitland, moving nervously.
"I must know everything."
"Well," answered Barton, his voice sinking to a tone of reluctant horror--"well, your poor friend was _murdered!_ That"s what I meant when I said I did not blame the jury; they could have given no other verdict than they did on the evidence of my partner."
Murder! The very word has power to startle, as if the crime were a new thing, not as old (so all religions tell us) as the first brothers. As a meteoric stone falls on our planet, strange and unexplained, a waif of the universe, from a nameless system, so the horror of murder descends on us, when we meet it, with an alien dread, as of an intrusion from some lost star, some wandering world that is h.e.l.l.
"Murdered!" cried Maitland. "Why, Barton, you must be dreaming! Who on earth could have murdered poor Shields? If ever there was a man who was no one"s enemy but his own, that man was Shields! And he literally had nothing that anyone could have wanted to steal. I allowed him so much--a small sum--paid weekly, on Thursdays; and it was a Wednesday when he was--when he died. He could not have had a shilling at that moment in the world!"
"I am very sorry to have to repeat it, but murdered he was, all the same, and that by a very cunning and cautious villain--a man, I should say, of some education.
"But how could it possibly have been done? There"s the evidence before you in the paper. There was not a trace of violence on him, and the circ.u.mstances, which were so characteristic of his ways, were more than enough to account for his death. The exposure, the cold, the mere sleeping in the snow--it"s well known to be fatal Why," said Maitland, eagerly, "in a long walk home from shooting in winter, I have had to send back a beater for one of the keepers; and we found him quite asleep, in a snowdrift, under a hedge. He never would have wakened."
He was naturally anxious to refute the horrible conclusion which Barton had arrived at.
The young doctor only shook his head. His opinion was manifestly fixed.
"But how can you possibly know better than the jury," urged Maitland peevishly, "and the coroner, and the medical officer for the district, who were all convinced that his death was perfectly natural--that he got drunk, lost his way, laid down in the cart, and perished of exposure?
Why, you did not even hear the evidence. I can"t make out," he went on, with the querulousness of an invalid, "why you should have come up just to talk such nonsense. The coroner and the jury are sure to have been right."
"Well, you see, it was not the coroner"s business nor the jury"s business, to know better than the medical officer for the district, on whose evidence they relied. But it is _my_ business; for the said officer is my partner, and, but for me, our business would be worth very little. He is about as ignorant and easy-going an excellent old fellow as ever let a life slip out of his hands."
"Then, if you knew so much, why didn"t you keep him straight?"
"Well, as it happened, I was down in Surrey with my people, at a wedding, when the death occurred, and they made a rather superficial examination of the deceased."
"Still, I see less than ever how you got a chance to form such an extraordinary and horrible opinion if you were not there, and had only this printed evidence," said Maitland, waving a sheet of the _Times_, "to go by; and _this_ is dead against you. You"re too clever."
"But I made a proper and most careful examination myself, on my return to town, the day after the inquest," said Barton, "and I found evidence enough _for me_--never mind where--to put the matter beyond the reach of doubt. The man was _murdered_, and murdered, as I said, very deliberately, by some one who was not an ordinary ignorant scoundrel."
"Still, I don"t see how you got a chance to make your examination," said Maitland; "the man would be buried as usual--"
"Excuse me. The unclaimed bodies of paupers--and there was no one to claim _his_--are reserved, if needed--"
"I see--don"t go on," said Maitland, turning rather pale, and falling back on his sofa, where he lay for a little with his eyes shut "It is all the fault of this most unlucky illness of mine," he said, presently.
"In my absence, and as n.o.body knew where I was, there was naturally no one to claim the body. The kind of people who knew about him will take no trouble or risk in a case like that." He was silent again for a few moments; then, "What do _you_ make out to have been tbe cause of death?"
he asked.
"Well," said Barton slowly, "I don"t much care to go into details which you may say I can hardly prove, and I don"t want to distress you in your present state of health."
"Why don"t you speak out! Was he poisoned? Did you detect a.r.s.enic or anything? He had been drinking with some one!"
"No; if, in a sense, he had been poisoned, there was literally nothing that could be detected by the most skilled a.n.a.lysis. But, my dear fellow, there are venoms that leave _no_ internal trace. If I am right--and I think I am--he was destroyed by one of these. He had been a great traveller, had he not?"
"Yes," answered Maitland.
"Well, it is strange; the murderer must have been a great traveller also. He must have been among the Macoushi Indians of Guiana, and well acquainted with their arts. I know them too. I went there botanizing."
"You won"t be more explicit?"
"No," he said; "you must take it on my word, after all."
Maitland, if not convinced, was silent He had knowledge enough of Barton, and of his healthy and joyous nature, to be certain that his theory was no morbid delusion; that he had good grounds for an opinion which, as he said, he could no longer, prove--which was, indeed, now incapable of any proof. No one had seen the commission of tbe crime, and the crime was of such a nature, and so cunningly planned, that it could not possibly be otherwise brought home to the murderer.
Now Maitland, knowing the _Hit or Miss_, and the private room up-stairs with the dormer windows, where the deed must have been done, if done at all, was certain that there could not possibly have been any eye-witness of the crime.
"What shall you do?" he asked, "or have you done anything in consequence of your discovery? Have you been to the police?"
"No," said Barton; "where was the use? How can I prove anything now? It is not as if poison had been used, that could be detected by a.n.a.lysis.
Besides, I reflected that if I was right, the less fuss made, the more likely was the murderer to show his hand. Supposing he had a secret motive--and he must have had--he will act on that motive sooner or later. The quieter everything is kept, the more he feels certain he is safe, the sooner he will move in some way or other. Then, perhaps, there may be a chance of detecting him; but it"s an outside chance. Do you know anything of the dead man"s past history?"
"Nothing, except that he was from the North, and had lived a wandering life."
"Well, we must wait and see. But there is his daughter, left under your care. What do you mean to do about _her?_"
The question brought Maitland back to his old perplexities, which were now so terribly increased and confused by what he had just been told.
"I was going to tell you, when you broke in with this dreadful business.
Things were bad before; now they are awful," said Maitland. "_His daughter has disappeared!_ That was what I was coming to: that was the rest of my story. It was difficult and distressing enough before I knew what you tell me; now--great Heavens! what am I to do?"
He turned on the sofa, quite overcome. Barton put his hand encouragingly on his shoulder, and sat so for some minutes.
"Tell me all about it, old boy?" asked Barton, at length.