One of My Sons Part 14

"The child? Do I remember that the father suggested she should be put to bed undressed? Oh, I cannot have you disturb the child. Used as I am to the subterfuges of criminals I find it impossible to believe that a father could make use of his child as a medium for his own safety."

"Or Miss Meredith?" the insidious whisperer went on.

"Or Miss Meredith. She may have the bottle on her own person, but she would never pa.s.s it over to the child. No, no! curb your extravagances and confine your attention to Mr. Outhwaite, who is kind enough to allow us to inspect his pockets----"

Here the curtain at the drawing-room door was disturbed and a pallid face looked forth.

"I pray you," came in entreaty from Hope's set lips, "spare this stranger, whose only crime has been to show kindness to a man he did not know, in an extremity he did not understand. Search me; search Claire; but do not subject this gentleman to an act so injurious. I swear that the phial is not on him! I swear----"

She hardly knew what she was saying. The heaped-up excitements of the last two hours were fast unsettling her reason.

She held out her hands imploringly. "I don't know why I care so much,"

she murmured in fresh expostulation, "but I feel as if I could not bear it."

From that moment I loved her, though I knew this interposition in my behalf sprang from her womanly instinct rather than from the spontaneous impulse of a freshly awakened heart. I must have shown how deeply I was moved, for the coroner looked distressed, though he gave no signs of modifying his intention, and I was beginning to empty my pockets before his eyes, when Sweet.w.a.ter's expressive countenance showed a sudden change, and he rushed again to the rear. Here he stood a moment before the dining-room door, striking his forehead in wrathful indecision; then he disappeared within, only to shout aloud in another instant:

"Fool! fool! And I noticed when I first came in that the clock had stopped. See! see!"

We were at his side in an instant. He was standing by the mantelpiece, with the heavy French clock tilted up before our eyes. Under it, tucked away in the s.p.a.ce allowed to the pendulum, we saw a small h.o.m.oeopathic bottle. There was one drop of liquid at the bottom, which even before Mr. Gryce lifted the bottle to his nose we recognised by its smell to be prussic acid.

The phial which had held the deadly dose was found.

X

THE PENCIL

Under Sweet.w.a.ter's careful guidance, the clock fell slowly back into place. It was one of those solid time-pieces which seem to form part of the shelf on which they stand. When it was again quite level, he pointed to its face. The hands stood at half-past nine, just ten minutes previous to the time of my entering the house.

"At what hour did Mr. Leighton Gillespie go out to-night?" he asked.

No one answered.

"Before half-past nine or after it?" urged the coroner, consulting the faces about him for the answer he probably had no expectation of receiving from anyone's lips.

"Leighton's all right," cried out a voice from the library. "I hate his puritanical ways, but there's no harm in him."

It sounded like Alfred, but the impression made by this interruption was not good.

"Will you allow me to state a fact," ventured Miss Meredith, coming impulsively forward. "If you hope to establish the guilt or innocence of anyone by the time marked by these hands, you will make a mistake.

The clock has been out of order for some days. Yesterday it ran down.

I heard my uncle say that it would have to go back to Tiffany's for repairs."

"Fetch in the butler or whoever has charge of this room," ordered Dr.

Frisbie. "Let none of you attempt to speak while he is present. I wish to interrogate him myself and will have no interruptions."

We all drew back, and silence reigned in the s.p.a.cious apartment which, lit up as for a dinner party, was yet in such a state of disorder that the orderly old butler groaned as his eyes fell upon the heaped-up rugs, the overturned chairs, and the great table stacked with fine china and cut-gla.s.s taken from the buffet and closets.

"Oh, what shall I do here?" he grumbled. "What would master----"

He did not finish; but we all understood him. The coroner pointed to the clock.

"When was this wound last?"

The old man stared at the time-piece, mumbled, and shook his head.

Then his eyes fell on Miss Meredith.

"I don't remember," he protested. "It has not been running for days; has it, Miss? I have had to use my watch in order to be on time with the meals. Why do you ask, sir?"

He was not answered. This repeated closing up of every avenue of inquiry was beginning to tell upon the police.

"Mr. Gillespie looked very sober, very sober indeed, when he found he had to drink his wine alone," continued the butler, with a melancholy emphasis calculated to draw our attention back to the scene which had manifestly made such an impression upon him. "He lifted up his gla.s.s and held it out a long while before he drank it. I think he looked at each one of the young gentlemen in turn, but I didn't care to watch him too closely, for there was something solemn about him which made me feel queer, living so long as I have in the family and with every one of these young gentlemen babies in arms when I came here. He drank it finally, standing. But there was no harm in that gla.s.s, sirs, for I finished the bottle myself afterwards, and I am well, as you see.

More's the pity!"

"Shut up!" shouted an angry voice from across the hall. "You are making a ---- mess of the whole affair with your confounded drivel."

The coroner motioned the butler away.

The atmosphere of the house had now become oppressive even to me, and for the first time I experienced a desire to be quit of it, and would certainly have made some movement towards departure had it not been for my dread of leaving Miss Meredith alone with her own thoughts.

Meanwhile the coroner was issuing his orders.

"Dakin, request the gentlemen upstairs to come down again for a few minutes. Dr. Bennett, the body of your patient can now be moved."

"Ah, here we are again," he exclaimed, as Leighton was heard descending the stairs.

"Now, if the two other sons of the deceased will attend to my words for a moment I will state that under the existing circ.u.mstances I feel it my duty to call a jury and hold an inquest over Mr. Gillespie's remains. The phial smelling of prussic acid having been found in the dining-room, I shall only require restraint put upon the movements of the two sons of Mr. Gillespie who are known to have entered this room during the hour when this fatal dose was administered. The one called Alfred, having remained above, is for the present free from suspicion.

I would be glad to show the same consideration to the others; but the facts demand a severity which I hope future developments will allow us to confine to the guilty party. Mr. Outhwaite, I must request you to hold yourself subject to my summons. Miss Meredith, I advise you to hold no communication with your cousins till this matter shows a clearer aspect."

He was moving off, when Alfred, who had been s.h.i.+fting uneasily under George's eye, stepped up to him and said:

"I don't want any discrimination made between my brothers and myself.

I may be quite conscious of my own innocence, but I cannot accept any show of favours founded on a misconception. If George and Leighton are to be subjected to surveillance on account of entering the dining-room this evening, then I want to be put under surveillance too. For I was in that room as well as they, searching for a small gold pencil which I had dropped from my pocket at dinner-time."

This acknowledgment made under such circ.u.mstances and against such odds was calculated to enlist sympathy, and my heart warmed towards the man who in the heat of anger could strike a brother to the ground, but scorned at a less angry moment to take refuge in a misunderstanding which left that brother at a disadvantage.

But the imperturbability of the elderly detective, who at that moment found something to interest him in the chasing on a Chinese gong hanging from a bracket in the hall, warned me not to be too quick with my sympathies. Kindly as he beamed upon this favoured object of his attention, I saw that he took little stock in the generous att.i.tude a.s.sumed by Mr. Gillespie's youngest son; and my attention being attracted to his movements, I was happily glancing his way when he suddenly approached Alfred with what looked like an empty tumbler in his hand.

"Is this the article you refer to?" he asked.

And then we saw that the tumbler was not empty,--that it held a small object standing upright in it, and that this object was a gold pencil.

"Yes, that is my pencil," Alfred acknowledged. "But----"

"Oh, I am accountable for putting it into the tumbler," the old man admitted. "The tumbler was a clean one, Mr. Gillespie. I a.s.sure you I examined it closely before making it a receptacle for this pencil. But the pencil itself--Let me ask you to put your nose to it, Mr.

Gillespie."