Mrs. Mortimer now fully comprehended that Torrens had been murdered; and an appalling dread seized upon her—for she felt that she was completely in the power of two diabolical ruffians, who were as capable of assassinating her as one had already been to make away with her husband.
A faintness came over her—and she staggered against the wall for support; when Jack Rily, in answer to Vitriol Bob’s last observations, said, “Oh! Poll didn’t tell me a single word about any business that you had in hand: but as I met her quite by accident and suspected she was coming here, I forced myself, as one may say, upon her company—for I thought you’d be glad to see an old pal, if you was under a cloud.”
These words instantaneously re-assured Mrs. Mortimer. She comprehended that her confederate had uttered them, too, for that purpose; and it flashed to her mind that he only wanted to get Vitriol Bob down into the lower part of the house in order to make an attack upon him. She accordingly recovered her self-possession, and rapidly groped her way to the bottom of the stairs, when a feeble light, glimmering from the kitchen, showed her a sinister object lying just inside the threshold.
The blood ran cold in her veins: for, much as she had hated Torrens—anxiously as she had longed to be avenged upon him—profoundly as she abhorred the tie that to some degree had linked their fates, she nevertheless felt horrified at the conviction that the murdered man lay there—in her very path!
Nevertheless, she still maintained her courage as well as she could, and, hastily passing the lifeless form, entered the cheerless, gloomy kitchen, which indeed appeared to be the proper haunt for such a miscreant as Vitriol Bob, and the fitting scene for such a tragedy as the one which had been enacted there that night!
In the middle of the kitchen she paused, and listened with breathless suspense.
Jack Rily had just reached the bottom of the stairs leading thither: Vitriol Bob had only just begun to descend them.
“Well, here is indeed a stiff ’un,” exclaimed the former, stopping short in the interval between the foot of the steps and the threshold of the kitchen. “What had he done to you, Bob?—and when did this happen?”
“Wait a moment—and I’ll tell you all about it,” was the reply. “I hope Poll has brought lots of grub—for the business hasn’t taken away my appetite.”
“She has got a basket with her,” said Jack Rily.