“I had observed the thing, of course, often enough before. Its size and depth and the machinery about it was only too conspicuous to draw my serious notice. But now I went to a closer examination—and, by the Lord, gentlemen, what do you think I found caught among the cogs? Why, a finger-stall. That was something, at least, for on the day we first saw her, Mrs D. was wearing such a thing.
“That decided me. I tested the machinery, and found the bucket drop like oil. A child could have worked it. I determined to go down into that well, and find out, if I could, what a little fishing at its bottom might bring to light. You see, the discovery of the grotto was an accident. I’d been looking for murder, not suicide, and the truth met me, like you, sir, half way. Only God or a Jury can give it a name. That was no earlier than this morning, when I got over a couple of the locals, and had the cover off and was let down. He’d never wanted the cover off. The man must have been built of stone and steel. To sit there those days and nights famished and deserted, waiting for his release that never came! The most of us, I think, would have dropped into the water and ended it long before he did. But he always had his revolver, that’s true. He could afford to stake up to the last chance. I don’t know how long he himself had known about the grotto; but he only let his wife into the secret of it a fortnight ago. He’d seen or heard from the woman Carey, as far as I can gather, and thought as we should be down upon him at once. He bolted for his hiding at the first in a panic, arranging with Mrs D. that she was to come and wind him up at evenfall if nothing happened; and that was the last the world saw of him. It come on the woman in a moment as how she’d got him in a trap, and her chance was given her at last. I had it all out of her, while she kept the reason to speak it, and that wasn’t long. When she saw him being brought in, she broke out like a screech-owl; and a mercy for her if she could be turned into one in actual fact, poor creatur’.”
“Jannaway,” said Mr Shapter, “I owe you an apology.”
“I’ll cancel the debt, sir,” answered the inspector. “After all, your saying you couldn’t understand me was a compliment.”
CHAPTER XXXIII.
A REST BY THE WAY
My story draws to a close. I linger only yet a little by the way—a balmy breathing space, a last restful interlude between the acts—before I rally to the final struggle.
Before the inquest could be held, my unhappy mother’s complaint had so increased upon her that it became an imperative necessity to remove her to the asylum from which her poor broken spirit was only to be released by death. The whole painful business, with the material difficulties it entailed upon me at a crucial pass, was undertaken for me by Mr Shapter (acting on my good Johnny’s private instructions) with the most feeling tact and helpfulness. These are matters to be touched upon with no less delicacy than was shown in their accommodation. Never has man been blessed with a finer and more generous-hearted friend than I.
Yet, conscious of a hundred unmerited graces, a blight as of abandonment by all the world seemed to fall upon me as I left the room where the inquest had been held. The inquiry was over; the last flicker of its excitement was dead for me; the madhouse and the unhallowed acre had closed upon the scene. The Jury, equal to Inspector Jannaway’s faith in them, had brought in a verdict of Justifiable felo de se; and, with the snap of that final spark, the curtain had fallen, committing me to a profound gloom.
That, in its essence, no doubt, was fruit of the inevitable reaction from long nervous tension. In the exhaustion following any such prolonged struggle, one is always apt to make a selfish grievance of one’s state—to resent the self-imposition of one’s burden as a duty enforced upon one by the callous egotism of one’s fellows. The disease of ungraciousness soured my vision, and painted the world to me a bilious yellow. True, my friend had very handsomely provided the material means to my success; but why, in the justice of things, should Fate have imposed upon me the necessity of securing that success at all? A dozen issues were involved in the question, and I knew it; but my reason was clouded under the sense of personal desertion, at the crisis, by those who appeared to think that their moral sympathy with me at a distance was all-sufficing. In fact, and to end the matter, I had not heard from the two dearest to me for a week and more, and the shadow of that silence was obscuring my mind, and peopling it with a hundred spectres of apprehension.
And so, returning to the “Black Dog,” I found a telegram awaiting me: