"Quare enough too!" added a third party, "for yisterday I had a talk with young Andrew Zane, this one's son (touching the body with his foot), and Andrew said—a little pale I thought he was—says he, 'Pop's about.'"
Here a little buzz of mystery—so grateful to crowds which have come far over slippery surface and expect much—undulated to the outward boundaries. As the people moved the ice cracked like a cannon shot, and they dispersed like blackbirds, to rally soon again.
"Here's a doctor! Now we'll know about it! He's here!" was exclaimed by several, as an important little man was pushed along, and the thickest crowd gave him passage. The little man borrowed a boy's cap to kneel on, adjusted a sort of microscopic glass to his nose, as if plain eyes had no adequate use to this scientific necessity, and he called up two volunteers to turn the corpses over, keep back the throng, give him light, and add imposition to apprehension. Finally he stopped at a place in the garments of the principal of the twain. "Here is a hole," he exclaimed, "with burned woollen fibre about it, as if a pistol had been fired at close quarters. Draw back this woollen under-jacket! There—as I expected, gentlemen, is a pistol shot in the breast! What is the name of the person? Ah! thank you! Well, William Zane, gentlemen, was shot before he was drowned?"
The great crowd swayed and rushed forward again, and again the ice cracked like artillery. Before the multitude could swarm to the honey of a crime a second time, the news was dispersed that both of the drowned men had bullet wounds in their bodies, and both had been undoubtedly murdered. Some supposed it was the work of river pirates; others a private revenge, perpetrated by some following boat's party in the darkness of night. But more than one person piped shrilly ere the people wearily scattered in the dusk for their homes on the two shores of the river: "How did it happen that young Zane, the old un's son, said yisterday that his daddy was about, when he's been frozen in at least three days?"
CHAPTER II.
THE FLIGHT.
A handsome residence on the south side of Queen Street had been the home of the prosperous ship-carpenter, William Zane. His name was on the door on a silver plate. As the evening deepened and the news spread, the bell was pulled so often that it aided the universal alarm following a crime, and a crowd of people, reinforced by others as fast as it thinned out, kept up the watch on ever-recurring friends, coroner's officers and newspaper reporters, as they ascended the steps, looked grave, made inquiries, and returned to dispense their information.
But there was very little indignation, for Zane had been an insanely passionate man, rather hard and exacting, and had he been found dead alone anywhere it would probably have been said at once that he brought it on himself. His partner, Rainey, however, had conducted himself so negatively and mildly, and was of such general estimation, that the murder of the senior member of the film took on some unusual public sympathy from the reflected sorrow for his fellow-victim. The latter had been one of Zane's apprentices, raised to a place in the establishment by his usefulness and sincere love of his patron. Just, forbearing, soft-spoken, and not avaricious, Sayler Rainey deserved no injury from any living being. He was unmarried, and, having met with a disappointment in love, had avowed his intention never to marry, but to bequeath all the property he should acquire to his partner's only son, Andrew Zane.
What, then, was the motive of this double murder? The public comprehension found but one theory, and that was freely advanced by the rash and imputative in the community of Kensington: The murderer was he who had the only known temptation and object in such a crime. Who could gain anything by it but Andrew Zane, the impulsive, the mischief-making and oft-restrained son of his stern sire, who, by a double crime, would inherit that undivided property, free from the control of both parent and guardian?