"Wait until I have done, and you will see," said Mr. Carruthers in a tone of stately rebuke. "The last person seen in the company of the man afterwards found murdered, and who dined with him at the tavern, wore a coat which the waiter who recognized the body had chanced to notice particularly. The appearance of this person the man failed in describing with much distinctness; but he was quite positive about the coat, which he had taken from the man and hung up on a peg with his own hands. And now, Clare, I am coming to the strangest part of this strange story."
The girl listened with interest indeed, and with attention, but still wondering how her uncle could be involved in the matter, and perhaps feeling a little impatient at the slowness with which, in his self-importance, he told the story.
"I was much surprised," continued Mr. Carruthers, "to find in the gentleman who came here yesterday, and whose name was Dalrymple, an emissary from the Home Office, intrusted by Lord Wolstenholme with a special mission to me"--impossible to describe the pomposity of Mr. Carruthers's expression and utterance at this point--"to me. He came to request me to assist him in investigating this most intricate and important case. It is not a mere police case, you must understand, my dear. The probability is that the murdered man is a political refugee, and that the crime has been perpetrated"--Mr. Carruthers brought out the word with indescribable relish--"by a member of one of the secret societies, in revenge for the defection of the victim, or in apprehension of his betrayal of the cause."
"What cause, uncle?" asked Clare innocently. She was not of a sensational turn of mind, had no fancy for horrors as horrors, and was getting a little tired of her uncle's story.
"God knows, my dear--some of their liberty, fraternity, and equality nonsense, I suppose. At all events, this is the supposition; and to ask my aid in investigating the only clue in the possession of the government was the object of Mr. Dalrymple's visit yesterday. The man who was seen in the company of the murdered man by the waiter at the tavern, and who went away with him, wore a coat made by Evans of Amherst. You know him, Clare--the old man who does so much of our work here. I went to his shop with Mr. Dalrymple, and we found out all about the coat. He remembered it exactly, by the description; and told us when he had made it (two years ago), and when he had sold it (six weeks ago), to a person who paid for it with a ten-pound note with the Post-office stamp upon it. The old man is not very bright, however; for though he remembered the circumstance, and found the date in his day-book, he could not give anything like a clear description of the man who had bought the coat. He could only tell us, in general terms, that he would certainly know him again if he should see him; but he talked about a rather tall young man, neither stout nor thin, neither ugly nor handsome, dark-eyed and dark-haired,--in short, the kind of description which describes nothing. We came away as wise as we went, except in the matter of the date of the purchase of the coat. That does not help much towards the detection of the murderer, as a coat may change hands many times in six weeks, if it has been originally bought by a dubious person. The thing would have been to establish a likeness between the man described by Evans as the purchaser of the coat, and the man described by the waiter as the wearer of the coat at the tavern. But both descriptions are very vague."
"What was the coat like?" asked Clare in a strange, deliberate tone.
"It was a blue Witney overcoat, with a label inside the collar bearing Evans's name. The waiter at the tavern where the murdered man dined had read the name, and remembered it. This led to their sending to me; and my being known to the authorities as a very active magistrate"--here Mr. Carruthers swelled and pouted with importance--"they naturally communicated with me. The question is now, how I am to justify the very flattering confidence which Lord Wolstenholme has placed in me? It is a difficult question, and I have been considering it maturely. Mr. Dalrymple seems to think the clue quite lost. But I am not disposed to let it rest; I am determined to set every possible engine at work to discover whether the description given by the waiter and that given by Evans tally with one another."
"You said the inquest was adjourned, I think," said Clare.
"Yes, until to-day; but Mr. Dalrymple will not have learned anything. There will be an open verdict"--here Mr. Carruthers condescendingly explained to his niece the meaning of the term--"and the affair will be left to be unravelled in time. I am anxious to do all I can towards that end; it is a duty I owe to society, to Lord Wolstenholme, and to myself."
Clare had risen from her chair, and approached the window. Her uncle could not see her face, as he resumed his seat at the breakfast-table, and opened his letters in his usual deliberate and dignified manner. Being letters addressed to Mr. Carruthers of Poynings, they were, of course, important; but if they had not had that paramount claim to consideration, the communication in question might have been deemed dull and trivial. Whatever their nature, Clare Carruthers turned her head from the window and furtively watched her uncle during their perusal. He read them with uplifted eyebrows and much use of his gold-rimmed eye-glasses, as his habit was, but then laid them down without comment, and took up a newspaper.