CHAPTER XI.
A SILENT WITNESS.
Tom Henderson returned to the house after this last interview with his groom in a truly pitiable state of terror and alarm. And a man, a stranger, passed him in the avenue. This was no doubt one of his watchers; his footsteps were dogged; he was a free agent no more.
He turned cold and shuddered when he thought of it. Dread visions rose before him, and the terrible penalty of his crime grimly haunted his mind.
As he entered the house he suddenly remembered the coat he had worn the day before, when he had gone to meet the hapless Elsie. He had cut out and burnt the stained sleeve, but what if the house was searched and the coat discovered in its—as he supposed—present condition? No, it must be destroyed entirely, he told himself.
But how to do this? If he burnt it the smell of the burning cloth would spread through the house. He would bury it in the garden somewhere, he finally decided; but he must wait to do this; must be sure that no one was loitering about, spying his actions.
He waited until midnight. Mrs. Henderson had not come down-stairs to dinner, nor during the whole evening. She had sent a message to her son that she had a cold, and was unable to appear. Henderson, therefore, had only his own miserable company. And to sustain his courage he kept drinking glass after glass of whisky, and by twelve o’clock had certainly had more than enough.
When the clock pointed to this hour he rose, and quietly as possible stole upstairs for the purpose of bringing down the coat that he intended to conceal. He unlocked the drawer in the wardrobe where he knew he had placed it, and started back with sudden astonishment and dismay, to find it was gone! He absolutely shook with fear. Where and how had it disappeared? He turned everything over in the drawer twenty times with trembling hands, but did so, as he knew, in vain.
He never thought of his mother about the matter for a moment. Either it had been taken as evidence against him, or—and his guilty soul shivered within him at the idea—some supernatural agency had been at work, and the restless spirit of the dead Elsie had carried away the blood-stained garment.
This thought filled him with absolute horror. He glanced furtively at the dark corners of the room; he fancied that unseen things were near, and at last, unable to endure the strain any longer, he once more hurried down-stairs, and spent the night as best he could on the dining-room couch, after first stupefying himself with whisky.
In the morning he felt in a wretched state alike of mind and body. The inquest on the unfortunate Elsie Wray was to be held at eleven o’clock at the Wayside Inn, and thither Henderson knew he must go. He had to face this ordeal, however ill he was prepared for it, and Jack Reid, the groom, drove him over in the dog-cart at the appointed hour. Henderson was conscious that the people who met him in the country lanes glanced at him with suspicious and lowering looks. His connection with the unhappy Elsie had been whispered about, and many were ready to take the blackest view of the case.