“I don’t know anything about it,” were the words with which Arthur Cumberland sought to escape from the net which had been thus deftly cast about him. “I didn’t wear the things. Anybody can tell you what clothes I came home in. Ranelagh may have borrowed—”
“Ranelagh wore his own coat and hat. We will let the subject of apparel drop, and come to a topic on which you may be better qualified to speak. Mr. Cumberland, you have told us that you didn’t know at the time, and can’t remember now, where you spent that night and most of the next morning. All you can remember is that it was in some place where they let you drink all you wished and leave when the fancy took you, and not before. It was none of your usual haunts. This seemed strange to your friends, at the time; but it is easier for us to understand, now that you have told us what had occurred at your home-table. You dreaded to have your sister know how soon you could escape the influence of that moment. You wished to drink your fill and leave your family none the wiser. Am I not right?”
“Yes; it’s plain enough, isn’t it? Why harp on that string? Don’t you see that it maddens me? Do you want to drive me to drink again?”
The coroner interposed. He had been very willing to leave the burden of this painful inquiry to the man who had no personal feelings to contend with; but at this indignant cry he started forward, and, with an air of fatherly persuasion, remarked kindly:
“You mustn’t mind the official tone, or the official persistence. There is reason for all that Mr. Fox says. Answer him frankly, and this inquiry will terminate speedily. We have no wish to harry you—only to get at the truth.”
“The truth? I thought you had that pat enough. The truth? The truth about what? Ranelagh or me? I should think it was about me, from the kind of questions you ask.”
“It is, just now,” resumed the district attorney, as his colleague drew back out of sight once more. “You cannot remember the saloon in which you drank. That’s possible enough; but perhaps you can remember what they gave you. Was it whiskey, rum, absinthe, or what?”
The question took his irritable listener by surprise. Arthur gasped, and tried to steal some comfort from Coroner Perry’s eye. But that old friend’s face was too much in shadow, and the young man was forced to meet the district attorney’s eye, instead, and answer the district attorney’s question.
“I drank—absinthe,” he cried, at last.
“From this bottle?” queried the other, motioning again to Sweetwater, who now brought forward the bottle he had picked up in Cuthbert Road.