We found a knot of gaping, whispering rustics gathered about the farm when we reached it. The news had already got abroad, and a potent shadow was henceforth to add itself to the traditional spectres of the place. A stolid hot-faced member of the local police opened the door to us. A fellow-constable was in charge of the prisoner in the study. Thither we went.
She rose, with a smile, upon seeing us—there was a bright unearthly light in her eyes—and glided across to me.
“Hush!” she said. “They have found him, Charlie darling; but it does not matter, he can never hurt you again. How big and strong you have grown while you slept; and he has fallen to nothing. He would be no match for you now; and yet, in spite of all, I used to think him a fine man. He would woo so confidently; and all the time he never guessed what was in my heart. And in the end I did it so cleverly. He just went down there into hiding, into the place which he had discovered and told me of—I let him down myself—and afterwards it was so simple. I had only to wind up the bucket again and leave him. He had never foreseen that, for all his cleverness; and I kept my secret too well. He used to call up to me—the names that had once seemed to give me to him, and I listened and never answered. And then he implored and implored, and I never answered; but I looked over the rim and laughed at him until he knew. I saw his face hang white above the water—whiter and whiter every day—and then once, when evening had fallen, came the sound—O, my God!—and I knew that at last he had shot himself in his despair.”
She flung her hands to her throat, with a gasping cry—
“It was like him to take that way. He knew that the sound would go on for ever and ever in that pit and betray me in the end. Don’t you hear it now, coming from the garden? But you needn’t be afraid to touch me, my lord; my hands are clean. Gentlemen of the Jury, I did not kill him. Please let me pass. He has a headache, and it is my duty to attend to him. He is a very handsome man when he is himself. I should like to tell him that—it is so little—and I have never said as much to him before. I think it might help to cure him and stop the sound. Gentlemen—please!”
At a sign from Jannaway the two constables advanced, and put firm but not ungentle hands upon the poor creature. She struggled, uttering shriek upon shriek.
“Best leave her to us, sir,” panted one of the men. “She’ll go quiet in a little.”
Mr Shapter led me, inexpressibly agitated, from the room, and out into the open at the back. Here the detective took the lead, and, conducting us by way of weed-grown paths and tangled vegetation through a wicket into an old walled fruit garden, turned towards an angle of the enclosure where, on a little elevation, the yoke of a great well sprouted from the ground.
My heart shuddered in me as we approached the thing. It was a pretty massive structure, built for endurance, and calculated to the strain of a heavy load of water. The bucket, the loop of a strong chain connecting it with the windlass barrel, stood empty on the grass by the well rim—a great sheet-iron pail, capable of holding eight or perhaps half-a-score gallons. But the machinery by which it was manipulated was the most curious, being a nest of powerful cog-wheels and blocks, so adjusted under the butt of the windlass that, by turning a handle, a child, or little stronger, could wheel up the full bucket with perfect ease and as many pauses by the way as he chose. What was as striking as anything, perhaps, was the state of preservation of the whole structure; but, no doubt, the entire water supply of the farm depending on it had made that a perennial necessity.
“Will you look down now, gentlemen,” said the detective, “and see if anything strikes you? Hold steady, sir!”