“Why not proclaim it?” I asked, “It may assist justice.”
“Assist what?”
“Justice,” I replied. “What is that unfortunate lady’s first and most earnest desire? To discover the murderer of her husband, and to make him pay the penalty of his crime. It would be mine. I would even go to see the monster hanged.”
“It is the proper word. Monster—yes, he is, he must be. But you could never—no never! You are too soft—that is, tender. Who is the monster? If you it were who was wronged, I am he who would find him. But this Madame Lydia, she is to me nothing. What say you? Can you suspect? In this Great Porter Square can anyone suspect? Our amiable lady of No. 118—Mrs. Preedy—even she cannot say. Ah, but it is dark—mysterious. Yet I have a thought—it is here.” He tapped his forehead. “Shall I speak it?”
“Yes.”
“Bah! Why? It is not to me an interest. But if you wish so much to hear! Ah! well—my thought is this. The son, the wicked young man, Frederick, he is, they say, dead. But if he be not dead? What then? The monster, he—in secret to kill the father he betrayed!”
I turned my face from him, for I felt that it had grown suddenly white. My heart beat violently. Swiftly to my mind rushed the thought of your deadly peril. There came to me, in one clear, convincing flash, what, under other circumstances, would have taken me hours to work out. Think for yourself—consider calmly the circumstantial force of all that has passed—and you will see, as I see, how easy it would be to construct a chain of evidence against you from which it is scarcely possible you could escape.
“You are agitated,” said Richard Manx. “You turn from me. Why?”
In an instant I recovered my self-possession. I turned my face to him, and it seemed to me as if I had forced colour into it.
“The thought is so horrible,” I said. “That a son should kill his father in cold blood! I cannot bear to contemplate it. What wickedness there is in the world!”