"Murder! murder!" he shouted, still dwelling on a top note. "I found the devil locked in the back room without a light, and the shop," he pointed across the way, "is without a light also. He comes out yelling that there was a dead woman left behind. It's Mrs. Caldershaw for sure, and he's done for her. Murder! murder! Where's the police?"
Almost before he finished his explanation, which was not quite a full one, since he gave no account of my motor car being stolen, the men and women were running into the shop. My captor jerked me roughly to my feet, on which I could scarcely stand, so roughly had he handled me, and so sore were my bones. "Come along," he shouted, much excited, and dragged me across the road and into the shop. "Look on her as you've done for."
"Don't be a fool," I protested; "I'm a gentleman."
"But a murderer none the less," he retorted, and pushed me furiously down the three steps into the back room, which was now filled with men and women.
Some of the latter were on their knees examining the body, which I now saw to be that of an elderly person, plainly clothed in a maroon-coloured wincey dress, with a belt round her waist, whence dangled a bunch of keys and a cheap lace collar fastened with a gaudy cairngorm brooch. What with the disconcerting way in which my captor handled me--it seemed vain to resist--and the restless light of the lanterns, I could not see much more. One of the men looked up.
"Why did you cry out murder, Giles?" he asked the rough-looking man who held me. "There isn't a wound on her body. It's a fit, I believe."
The man Giles loosened me. "If I've been mistaken," he began, when a cry from a little woman cut his speech short.
"Her eye's out; her eye's out--the left one. Look! look!" and she seized a bystander's arm in terror.
Sure enough the left eye was missing, and I wondered why I had not noticed that such was the case when I examined the body by the light of the lucifer-match. I remembered distinctly the glassy, expressionless eyes, and yet, now there was only one, as I now saw plainly enough. Doubtless in the flickering light of the match and in my agitation, I had omitted to see that there was but one eye. Even at so critical a moment I began to wonder how I could have overlooked so obvious a fact, and then recalled the story a friend had told me of a man he had met with in the States, and to whom he spoke for five minutes, thinking there was something odd about his appearance, before he saw that both ears were missing. So easily, as I considered, even when placid can we fail to notice what is plainly apparent, much less when unnerved as I was when examining that dead face in the match-light. It was an odd thought at the time, considering that I stood in such peril. Had this cottage been in America I daresay I should have been lynched by the rough crowd of villagers around me.
"It's not murder maybe," growled Giles, seizing me again. "But this devil has torn her eye out, so----"