There was nobody in the drawing-room or dining-room when Mexton entered; therefore he looked into the doctor's consulting-room, where he found the wretched Lester half-intoxicated, with the brandy bottle before him. Indignant at the man's condition at such a time, Paul walked over to the table, seized the bottle, and threw it out of the window. In sheer amazement Lester stared blankly at him, holding a glass of brandy in his shaking hand.
"What--what did you do that for?" he asked thickly.
"To prevent you making a beast of yourself," replied the young man sharply. "Have you no sense of shame, man? Your daughter is lying dead--murdered--and yet you sit drinking here as though nothing had occurred. Shame, Dr. Lester! Shame!"
The drunkard listened vacantly to this speech, and mechanically raised the glass he held to his lips. In a moment Paul had dashed it out of his hand, and put himself on the defensive for the attack which he expected the creature to make on him. In place of doing so, and asserting some little manhood, the doctor bowed his shameful face on his hands, and began to weep in a maudlin manner.
"Oh, dear! oh, dear! that I should be treated like this in my own house! Poor Milly dead, and I denied any comfort."
"You won't get much comfort out of the brandy bottle," said Paul contemptuously. "Pull yourself together, Dr. Lester, and aid me."
"Aid you--in what?" asked Lester confusedly.
"In discovering who killed your daughter."
The doctor wrung his hands in a helpless sort of manner. "No chance of that," said he; "no chance of that."
"Why? Do you think the murderer has got clean away?"