The village surgeon having done his duty, prepared to leave the crowded little room, where the gaping servants still lingered, as if loth to tear themselves away from the ghastly figure of the dead man, over which Mr. Morton had spread a patchwork coverlet, taken from the bed in the chamber above. The “Softy” had looked on quietly enough at the dismal scene, watching the faces of the small assembly, and glancing furtively from one to another beneath the shadow of his bushy red eyebrows. His haggard face, always of a sickly white, seemed tonight no more colourless than usual. His slow whispering tones were not more suppressed than they always were. If he had a hangdog manner and a furtive glance, the manner and the glance were both common to him. No one looked at him; no one heeded him. After the first question as to the hour at which the trainer left the lodge had been asked and answered, no one spoke to him. If he got in anybody’s way, he was pushed aside; if he said anything, nobody listened to him. The dead man was the sole monarch of that dismal scene. It was to him they looked with awestricken glances; it was of him they spoke in subdued whispers. All their questions, their suggestions, their conjectures, were about him, and him alone. There is this to be observed in the physiology of every murder—that before the coroner’s inquest the sole object of public curiosity is the murdered man; while immediately after that judicial investigation the tide of feeling turns; the dead man is buried and forgotten, and the suspected murderer becomes the hero of men’s morbid imaginations.
John Mellish looked in at the door of the cottage to ask a few questions.
“Have you found anything, Dork?” he asked.
“Nothing particklar, sir.”
“Nothing that throws any light upon this business?”
“No, sir.”
“You are going home, then, I suppose?”
“Yes, sir, I must be going back now; if you’ll leave someone here to watch—”
“Yes, yes,” said John; “one of the servants shall stay.”
“Very well, then, sir; I’ll just take the names of the witnesses that’ll be examined at the inquest, and I’ll go over and see the coroner early tomorrow morning.”
“The witnesses; ah, to be sure. Who will you want?”
Mr. Dork hesitated for a moment, rubbing the bristles upon his chin.
“Well, there’s this man here, Hargraves, I think you called him,” he said presently; “we shall want him; for it seems he was the last that saw the deceased alive, leastways as I can hear on yet; then we shall want the gentleman as found the body, and the young man as was with him when he heard the shot: the gentleman as found the body is the most particklar of all, and I’ll speak to him at once.”
John Mellish turned round, fully expecting to see Mr. Prodder at his elbow, where he had been some time before. John had a perfect recollection of seeing the loosely-clad seafaring figure standing behind him in the moonlight; but, in the terrible confusion of his mind, he could not remember exactly when it was that he had last seen the sailor. It might have been only five minutes before; it might have been a quarter of an hour. John’s ideas of time were annihilated by the horror of the catastrophe which had marked this night with the red brand of murder. It seemed to him as if he had been standing for hours in the little cottage-garden, with Reginald Lofthouse by his side, listening to the low hum of the voices in the crowded room, and waiting to see the end of the dreary business.
Mr. Dork looked about him in the moonlight, entirely bewildered by the disappearance of Samuel Prodder.
“Why, where on earth has he gone?” exclaimed the constable. “We must have him before the coroner. What’ll Mr. Hayward say to me for letting him slip through my fingers?”
“The man was here a quarter of an hour ago, so he can’t be very far off,” suggested Mr. Lofthouse. “Does anybody know who he is?”
No; nobody knew anything about him. He had appeared as mysteriously as if he had risen from the earth, to bring terror and confusion upon it with the evil tidings which he bore. Stay; someone suddenly remembered that he had been accompanied by Bill Jarvis, the young man from the Reindeer, and that he had ordered the young man to drive his trap to the north gates, and wait for him there.
The constable ran to the gates upon receiving this information; but there was no vestige of the horse and gig, or of the young man. Samuel Prodder had evidently taken advantage of the confusion, and had driven off in the gig under cover of the general bewilderment.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do, sir,” said William Dork, addressing Mr. Mellish. “If you’ll lend me a horse and trap, I’ll drive into Doncaster, and see if this man’s to be found at the Reindeer. We must have him for a witness.”
John Mellish assented to this arrangement. He left one of the grooms to keep watch in the death chamber, in company with Stephen Hargraves the “Softy”; and, after bidding the surgeon good night, walked slowly homewards with his friends. The church clock was striking twelve as the three gentlemen left the wood, and passed through the little iron gateway on to the lawn.
“We had better not tell the ladies more than we are obliged to tell them about this business,” said John Mellish, as they approached the house, where the lights were still burning in the hall and drawing-room; “we shall only agitate them by letting them know the worst.”
“To be sure, to be sure, my boy,” answered the colonel. “My poor little Maggie always cries if she hears of anything of this kind;
