When the nurse rose to go, the young man asked permission to accompany her to her mother's. She declined, but he persisted in his request.
This man was a clever mechanic, and had invented a machine for making chenille. Sad to say, this invention he used for the purpose of inveigling the girl into his workshop, which was situated on the second floor of an extensive range of warehouses in a yard at Nottingham. He asked her to come on the Monday morning, and when she informed him that her lover was to come by the 12.30 train at Nottingham Station, he said if she came at eleven she would have plenty of time to see his invention, and then meet him. She at last consented.
I now come to a series of facts of a sensational character. On the Monday morning she went, according to the appointment, and was seen to go with this man up a flight of steps which led from the yard to the first floor. The door opened on to the landing outwardly. In about a quarter of an hour after she was seen staggering down the steps, and crossing the yard in the direction of the street. In the street she fell, and was conveyed to a neighbouring house. She was afterwards taken to a hospital.
In the course of some minutes the man himself came down the steps, and was informed that a girl had been seen coming out of his premises bleeding, and had been taken to a cottage.
"Was there?" said he, and walked away.
In the afternoon he was apprehended. He said he was very sorry, but that he was showing the girl a little toy pistol, and that it had gone off: quite accidentally. He wished to be taken to the hospital where she was.
The magistrate in the meanwhile had been informed of the occurrence, and with his clerk attended at the hospital to take her dying deposition.
There was an amount of skill and ability about the prisoner which was somewhat surprising to me, who am seldom surprised at anything.
"Did you not think it was an accident?" he asked.
The dying girl answered, "Yes."