The Mystery of a Hansom Cab Part 17

"You refuse."

"Yes, I do."

"Take time to consider. You may have to pay a heavy price for your refusal."

"If necessary, I will pay it."

"And you won't tell me where you were?"

"No, I won't."

Calton was beginning to feel annoyed.

"You're very foolish," he said, "sacrificing your life to some feeling of false modesty. You must prove an ALIBI."

No answer.

"At what hour did you get home?"

"About two o'clock in the morning."

"Did you walk home?"

"Yes--through the Fitzroy Gardens."

"Did you see anyone on your way home?"

"I don't know. I wasn't paying attention."

"Did anyone see you?"

"Not that I know of."

"Then you refuse to tell me where you were between one and two o'clock on Friday morning?"

"Absolutely!"

Calton thought for a moment, to consider his next move.

"Did you know that Whyte carried valuable papers about with him?"

Fitzgerald hesitated, and turned pale.

"No! I did not know," he said, reluctantly.

The lawyer made a master stroke.

"Then why did you take them from him?"

"What! Had he it with him?"

Calton saw his advantage, and seized it at once.

"Yes, he had it with him. Why did you take it?"

"I did not take it. I didn't even know he had it with him."

"Indeed! Will you kindly tell me what 'it' is." Brian saw the trap into which he had fallen.

"No! I will not," he answered steadily.

"Was it a jewel?"

"No!"

"Was it an important paper?"

"I don't know."

"Ah! It was a paper. I can see it in your face. And was that paper of importance to you?"

"Why do you ask?"

Calton fixed his keen grey eyes steadily on Brian's face.

"Because," he answered slowly, "the man to whom that paper was of such value murdered Whyte."

Brian started up, ghastly pale.

"My G.o.d!" he almost shrieked, stretching out his hands, "it is true after all," and he fell down on the stone pavement in a dead faint.

Calton, alarmed, summoned the gaoler, and between them they placed him on the bed, and dashed some cold water over his face. He recovered, and moaned feebly, while Calton, seeing that he was unfit to be spoken to, left the prison. When he got outside he stopped for a moment and looked back on the grim, grey walls.

"Brian Fitzgerald," he said to himself "you did not commit the murder yourself, but you know who did."

CHAPTER XII.

SHE WAS A TRUE WOMAN.

Melbourne society was greatly agitated over the hansom cab murder.

Before the a.s.sa.s.sin had been discovered it had been looked upon merely as a common murder, and one of which society need take no cognisance beyond the bare fact of its committal. But now that one of the most fas.h.i.+onable young men in Melbourne had been arrested as the a.s.sa.s.sin, it bade fair to a.s.sume gigantic proportions. Mrs. Grundy was shocked, and openly talked about having nourished in her bosom a viper which had unexpectedly turned and stung her.

Morn, noon, and night, in Toorak drawing-rooms and Melbourne Clubs, the case formed the princ.i.p.al subject of conversation. And Mrs. Grundy was horrified. Here was a young man, well born--"the Fitzgeralds, my dear, an Irish family, with royal blood in their veins"--well-bred--"most charming manners, I a.s.sure you, and so very good-looking" and engaged to one of the richest girls in Melbourne--"pretty enough, madam, no doubt, but he wanted her money, sly dog;" and this young man, who had been petted by the ladies, voted a good fellow by the men, and was universally popular, both in drawing-room and club, had committed a vulgar murder--it was truly shocking. What was the world coming to, and what were gaols and lunatic asylums built for if men of young Fitzgerald's calibre were not put in them, and kept from killing people? And then, of course, everybody asked everybody else who Whyte was, and why he had never been heard of before. All people who had met Mr. Whyte were worried to death with questions about him, and underwent a species of social martyrdom as to who he was, what he was like, why he was killed, and all the rest of the insane questions which some people will ask. It was talked about everywhere--in fas.h.i.+onable drawing-rooms at five o'clock tea, over thin bread and b.u.t.ter and souchong; at clubs, over brandies and sodas and cigarettes; by working men over their mid-day pint, and by their wives in the congenial atmosphere of the back yard over the wash-tub. The papers were full of paragraphs about the famous murder, and the society papers gave an interview with the prisoner by their special reporters, which had been composed by those gentlemen out of the floating rumours which they heard around, and their own fertile imaginations.