When Garden was informed of what had taken place he was inexpressibly annoyed. It happened that Tom Barley was with him when Fred was giving an account of the occurrence.
"Ah, well," said Garden, presently, "we must make the best of it. We must put the police on their guard immediately. The night trains to the Continent must be watched, and to-morrow we will offer a reward for their apprehension. I may manage to get an advertisement in some of the papers to-night. I have seen Mr. Quinlan, the wealthy owner of the stolen bracelet, and he has admitted that it was the genuine one which was stolen. He said he told the story to the police and the reporters in order that he should not be annoyed. 'I am rich enough to be able to afford such a loss,' he said. Wish we were—eh, Fred? I doubt whether I should have succeeded in prevailing upon him to let me pursue the case had I not informed him that in connection with it was a diabolical murder, for which an innocent girl had been condemned to death. 'The man who has the bracelet,' I said, 'is the man who committed the murder, and he and another laid an infernal plot to bring a beautiful girl to a shameful end.' This excited him, and he has given me carte blanche as to the expenses. So to-morrow we will offer a reward of five hundred pounds for the apprehension of Jeremiah Pamflett and his mother. It is good to know that their disappearance will not retard Miss Farebrother's release; everything is in training for that happy event. Ill as I can afford it, I would give something out of my own pocket to know what takes place to-night between the murderers and thieves."
To some extent, the late editions of the newspapers on the following day supplied him and the country with the intelligence he desired to obtain:
"The Murder of Miser Farebrother.—The Mystery of the Diamond Bracelet.—Strange Revelations.
"The painful interest excited in the public mind by the trial of Miss Farebrother for the murder of her father, Miser Farebrother—a crime of which, in the teeth of the verdict, the young lady is now incontestably proved to be innocent—will be revived by the account we now publish of an outrage which took place last night, in an untenanted timber-yard near Nine Elms.
"These premises have been unoccupied for some considerable time. They are of large extent, and out of the way of regular traffic. Early this morning, just before sunrise, the policeman on the beat, passing the timber-yard, heard a sound as of a person moaning within. Entrance to the yard is obtained through a pair of wooden gates, which are in a very dilapidated condition, being practically off their hinges. Indeed, by persons of the neighbourhood they are regarded as unsafe, and as likely soon to fall to pieces. The policeman, passing through these gates and going some distance into the yard—his course being guided by the faint moaning which had first arrested his attention—saw before him a woman in a frightful state. She was bleeding from a deep wound at the back of her neck, which must have been inflicted some hours previously, and was not sufficiently sensible to understand or reply to the questions addressed to her. Without delay the policeman procured assistance, and the woman was conveyed to St. Thomas's Hospital, where she was examined by the surgeon, who pronounced the wound she had received fatal, giving it as his opinion that she could not live twenty-four hours. Her pockets, which bore the appearance of having been rifled, contained nothing which afforded a clue to her name or address, nor were her clothes marked in a way which would lead to her identification. At ten o'clock this morning the woman recovered consciousness, and being made sensible that death was approaching, requested the presence of a magistrate, to whom she made her dying deposition, which we give here word for word:
"'My name is Maria Baily. I was in the employ of a wealthy lady, Mrs. Quinlan. I was acquainted with a man who called himself Captain Ablewhite, but that is not his right name, and I don't know what is. He promised to marry me, and he prevailed upon me to steal a diamond bracelet of great value. It was worth forty or fifty thousand pounds. What I did with the bracelet after I took it from the jewel-safe of my mistress has been described in all the papers. We were stopping at the Langham Hotel. A man was waiting outside on the night I stole it, and I went and gave it to him, and then I ran away from my service to a room Captain Ablewhite had taken for me in Leman Street, Whitechapel. Captain Ablewhite told me that the man to whom I gave the bracelet was named Jeremiah Pamflett, and that his master, a rich money-lender, Miser Farebrother, was going to lend money on it. Three days after I stole the bracelet Captain Ablewhite took me away to Germany, and I remained with him some time.
"'He told me that Jeremiah Pamflett had cheated him; that he had promised to get four thousand pounds from Miser Farebrother for the bracelet, and that Jeremiah Pamflett had given him only two hundred. When the account was put into the newspapers that the bracelet I had stolen was of no value, and that the stones in it were false, Captain Ablewhite said it was not true, and that the bracelet I had given to Jeremiah Pamflett was the real one. Then Captain Ablewhite quarrelled with me, and deserted me. Not knowing what to do, I returned to London and found out Jeremiah Pamflett. I thought it would have been difficult to find him, but it was very easy, because his master had been murdered, and there was a great trial just over, in which Miser Farebrother's daughter had been found guilty of the murder of her father. Jeremiah Pamflett tried to escape from me; but I would not let him, and the end of it was that he confessed he had the bracelet in his possession; and he proposed that he, his mother, and I should all go away together to America, where he would be able to sell the diamonds, and where, changing our names, we could live in safety. We were to meet last night at Nine Elms, and he and his mother were there when I arrived. So that we could talk together undisturbed, he took me to the place in which I was discovered, and there we had a quarrel. He wanted to give me ten pounds only, and said that he would send me more after he got safely away. I was in a great passion, and I asked him if Miser Farebrother had given him four thousand pounds for the bracelet—which money he said he had given to Captain Ablewhite—how it was that it was now in his possession. He said that was his business; and then we got to higher words, and I accused him of murdering Miser Farebrother so that he might rob him. Then Jeremiah Pamflett said: "Do you want to know the truth? I did kill him; and that is how I got the bracelet back again. But you shall not live to tell anybody else. I will kill you as I killed the miser!" As he said that, he plunged a knife into me, and I fell to the ground. The last words I heard were what his mother said: "She is dead; you have killed her. Let us get away as quick as possible." I do not remember anything more. I know I am dying. And I swear to God that I have told nothing but the truth!'
"Maria Baily signed this deposition, and then almost immediately became unconscious. The latest reports are to the effect that she cannot live through the night.
"Thus, in a strange and providential manner, a frightful injustice has been averted. It is singular that on the very day on which Jeremiah Pamflett committed this second murder, other evidence was obtained of the innocence of the young lady who, by an error of justice, was pronounced guilty of the murder of her father. The strongest evidence against the unfortunate and cruelly-wronged lady was supplied by a friend who had a deep affection for her. We refer to the evidence of Tom Barley, a policeman, who swore that he saw in the grounds of Parksides, at the time of the murder of the miser, a woman in a blue dress. Such a dress did Miss Farebrother wear when she went from her aunt's house in London, with the intention of asking her father for some assistance by which her aunt's family could be extricated from a temporary difficulty. It is now proved that Tom Barley is colour-blind, and that the woman he really saw had on a pink dress, such as Mrs. Pamflett, Jeremiah Pamflett's mother, wore on that occasion. This strange discovery opens up a fruitful field of speculation. Other evidence is also forthcoming which indubitably establishes Miss Farebrother's innocence.