Volume Three—Chapter Twenty.
The Truth.
The next day was a more eventful one still in the annals of Danmouth, and people stood in knots about the place discussing the new horror.
Doctor Asher was dying, and his colleague had sent for the nearest magistrate that morning, to take down the dying man’s deposition in the presence of witnesses, Trevithick being of those summoned to the bed.
The deposition was brief, but convincing, telling how the dying man had, when attending Gartram, found in his pocket-book sundry directions to his executors, explaining how his wealth was bestowed. The temptation had been too great for him, and after waiting long for an opportunity, he had taken advantage one evening of being at the house to add a certain drug to the chloral Gartram was in the habit of taking from time to time.
“As a dying man about to appear before my Maker,” he said, “I swear I had no intention of taking his life. I wished to make his sleep so sure that I could easily take what notes I wished, and this I did, to the amount of forty thousand pounds, but I did not calculate that the drug would be so strong, and I was horrified when I found that I could not bring him back from his deadly sleep.”
“What was the drug?” asked the magistrate, in the midst of a terrible silence.
“Better that it should not be known,” said the dying man feebly. “I have told the truth. The money is in the iron safe in my study. All but a few hundred pounds or so I sent abroad, and a note or two I passed beside. I gave Glyddyr that one by mistake, and—”
The words that would have followed were never uttered, for insensibility supervened, and Doctor Asher never spoke again.