When they had got thus far Lord Cantrip was standing close to the window of the room at Mr. Gresham’s elbow. “Don’t allow yourself to be hurried into believing it,” said Lord Cantrip.
“I do not know that we need believe it, or the reverse. It is a case for the police.”
“Of course it is;—but your belief and mine will have a weight. Nothing that I have heard makes me for a moment think it possible. I know the man.”
“He was very angry.”
“Had he struck him in the club I should not have been much surprised; but he never attacked his enemy with a bludgeon in a dark alley. I know him well.”
“What do you think of Fawn’s story?”
“He was mistaken in his man. Remember;—it was a dark night.”
“I do not see that you and I can do anything,” said Mr. Gresham. “I shall have to say something in the House as to the poor fellow’s death, but I certainly shall not express a suspicion. Why should I?”
Up to this moment nothing had been done as to Phineas Finn. It was known that he would in his natural course of business be in his place in Parliament at four, and Major Mackintosh was of opinion that he certainly should be taken before a magistrate in time to prevent the necessity of arresting him in the House. It was decided that Lord Fawn, with Fitzgibbon and Erle, should accompany the police officer to Bow Street, and that a magistrate should be applied to for a warrant if he thought the evidence was sufficient. Major Mackintosh was of opinion that, although by no possibility could the two men suspected have been jointly guilty of the murder, still the circumstances were such as to justify the immediate arrest of both. Were Yosef Mealyus really guilty and to be allowed to slip from their hands, no doubt it might be very difficult to catch him. Facts did not at present seem to prevail against him; but, as the Major observed, facts are apt to alter considerably when they are minutely sifted. His character was half sufficient to condemn him;—and then with him there was an adequate motive, and what Lord Cantrip regarded as “a possibility.” It was not to be conceived that from mere rage Phineas Finn would lay a plot for murdering a man in the street. “It is on the cards, my lord,” said the Major, “that he may have chosen to attack Mr. Bonteen without intending to murder him. The murder may afterwards have been an accident.”
It was impossible after this for even a Prime Minister and two Cabinet Ministers to go about their work calmly. The men concerned had been too well known to them to allow their minds to become clear of the subject. When Major Mackintosh went off to Bow Street with Erle and Laurence, it was certainly the opinion of the majority of those who had been present that the blow had been struck by the hand of Phineas Finn. And perhaps the worst aspect of it all was that there had been not simply a blow—but blows. The constables had declared that the murdered man had been struck thrice about the head, and that the fatal stroke had been given on the side of his head after the man’s hat had been knocked off. That Finn should have followed his enemy through the street, after such words as he had spoken, with the view of having the quarrel out in some shape, did not seem to be very improbable to any of them except Lord Cantrip;—and then had there been a scuffle, out in the open path, at the spot at which the angry man might have overtaken his adversary, it was not incredible to them that he should have drawn even such a weapon as a life-preserver from his pocket. But, in the case as it had occurred, a spot peculiarly traitorous had been selected, and the attack had too probably been made from behind. As yet there was no evidence that the murderer had himself encountered any ill-usage. And Finn, if he was the murderer, must, from the time he was standing at the club door, have contemplated a traitorous, dastardly attack. He must have counted his moments;—have returned slyly in the dark to the corner of the street which he had once passed;—have muffled his face in his coat;—and have then laid wait in a spot to which an honest man at night would hardly trust himself with honest purposes. “I look upon it as quite out of the question,” said Lord Cantrip, when the three Ministers were left alone. Now Lord Cantrip had served for many months in the same office as Phineas Finn.
“You are simply putting your own opinion of the man against the facts,” said Mr. Gresham. “But facts always convince, and another man’s opinion rarely convinces.”
“I’m not sure that we know the facts yet,” said the Duke.
“Of course we are speaking of them as far as they have been told to us. As far as they go—unless they can be upset and shown not to be facts—I fear they would be conclusive to me on a jury.”
“Do you mean that you have heard enough to condemn him?” asked Lord Cantrip.
“Remember what we have heard. The murdered man had two enemies.”
“He may have had a third.”
“Or ten; but we have heard of but two.”
“He may have been attacked for his money,” said the Duke.
“But neither his money nor his watch were touched,” continued Mr. Gresham. “Anger, or the desire of putting the man out of the way, has caused the murder. Of the two enemies one—according to the facts as we now have them—could not have been there. Nor
