“Not the faintest. But he may have letters in his pocket that would enlighten us.”
“Possibly,” replied Doctor Dale, coming back from the door. “It would be as well to look.”
But save an ordinary-looking cigar-case there was nothing whatever in the dead man’s pockets. It almost seemed, indeed, as if this were a precaution, and not an accident, for the mark on his pocket handkerchief had been cut out, and the initials on the cigar-case defaced.
Doctor Dale was not a suspicious man, evidently, for this did not appear to strike him as strange. He simply remarked as he moved away again:
“The police will, no doubt, be able to trace him. It would be as well if you were to communicate with them at once, Wiginton, I think. I must get home to bed or I shall be good for nothing all day,” he added half apologetically, “and I am nearly worn out. I owe it to my patients as well as to myself to take rest when I can, for no doctor can trust to his head when it is confused for want of sleep.”
“I have no doubt you are quite right,” answered Colonel Dacre, with a secret thrill of satisfaction, for he wanted, above all things, to gain time. “It is often necessary to consider oneself for the sake of others.”
“I shall see you later, of course?” said Doctor Dale, as he departed for his well-earned repose, and Colonel Dacre nodded.
He had no wish to shirk any inquiry, so far as he was personally concerned, but he meant to shelter the guilty, wretched woman whom he loved still, in spite of himself, and then forget her—if he could!
If he could! Ah! that was a painful proviso; for, somehow, he could only think of her even now—standing over her victim—as he had known her in the early days of her innocent girlhood, when he had believed her to be as true as steel, and as worthy of his worship as any saint.
And this was her work. How thankful he was to escape from its contemplation, and lock the door on the white face, which was fast settling into the solemn calm of death, no words can tell.