"But you surely don't suspect Mr. Marson?" cried Roger, aghast.
Octavius rolled up the paper upon which Roger had been writing and threw it into the fire as he answered, with marked emphasis on the latter part of his reply:
"I suspect no one—at present."
Extracts From A Detective's Note-Book
". . . I feel much more at ease now I have seen Roger . . . He has explained away my suspicions . . . It is true that his story tells very much against him, but to my mind this fact assures me of his innocence, as no guilty man would tell a story so much against himself . . . Yes, I am sure he is not guilty . . . He acted foolishly in obeying Miss Varlins' instructions—in keeping the truth from me at Jarlchester . . . Nevertheless, his conduct has not been that of a guilty man, and whosoever poisoned Sebastian Melstane, it was certainly not Roger Axton . . .
". . . I am much troubled about the disappearance of those letters, and would like to see them . . . There must be something in them which may throw light on this mysterious affair . . . I have no grounds for declaring this, but I think so . . . If Mr. Marson, who did not want his daughter to marry Melstane, wrote, his letters must be in that packet . . . It is his letters I wish to see . . . Now, however, by the unfortunate mistake of the postmistress, the letters are in the possession of Judas . . . This again implicates him in the affair . . . I don't like the attitude of Judas at all . . . Could he—but no, it's impossible; he has no motive . . . Sebastian Melstane was his friend, so there was no reason he should wish him out of the way . . . I believe that Judas holds the letters in order to make capital out of them with Mr. Marson . . . I'll thwart him on the point, however . . .
"Mem.—To see the postmistress to-morrow and find out for certain if the packet was delivered—as I verily believe—to Judas."
[Chapter 10]
The Missing Letters
Suburban Ironfields being, as has been stated, a poor relation of the opulent city, fared badly enough in all respects, after the fashion of all poor relations. Every comfort, every luxury, every improvement pertaining to nineteenth century civilisation was to be found in Ironfields itself; but the quondam village from whence it had sprung retained many of its primitive barbarisms.