Peter lost his temper, and said he would see me very much altered first, but he didn’t. He was foolish enough to resist, so I got another man, and after much kicking and struggling on Peter’s part we landed him at the Central Office. This resistance on Peter’s part seemed so utterly unlike him—his usual conduct being cheerful and polite to an irritating degree—that I rashly considered that for once I had caught him napping, and that by the merest accident.
At the office I stated all the facts, how I had seen Peter entering the house of Mr Bannister, and watched him leaving it, and knowing his character and antecedents had followed him and arrested him passing a £5 note, for the possession of which he could not properly account. Peter, on being searched, was found to have in his possession other £5, in one pound notes, thus clearly proving that the changing of the large note had been a matter of choice or policy, not necessity. To the Fiscal, however, he boldly declared that he had got all the money in way of business from his very good friend Mr Bannister, and he was put in the cells till I should go over to that gentleman to make inquiries. What the “business” was for which he had been paid ten pounds he refused to state, and I concluded that that business existed only in Peter’s imagination.
When I reached the house and was shown in, the impression I had formed was strengthened. Everything in the place seemed so stately and grand that I could not conceive how the possessor could be beholden to such a crime-stained wretch as Peter Hart. Mr Bannister at length appeared, and accompanied by his amiable young wife. I studied their faces closely as they entered, and it struck me that that of the husband was careworn, fearful, and anxiously watchful in expression; that of the young wife looked tenderly solicitous, and somewhat saddened and subdued.
“I have called about rather an awkward business,” I at length said, not knowing very well how to begin. “My name is James McGovan, and I am connected with the detective staff——”
I would have proceeded to say that I had watched and arrested Peter as already described, but I was at that juncture interrupted in a manner altogether unexpected. The gentleman who had an appearance at once refined and dignified, started back at the mention of my name, with his face as suddenly changed to a deadly and anguished expression as if he had been at the moment stabbed to the heart. He seemed ready to drop to the floor in his pitiable agony, and his wife saw the change even before my eye had taken it in.
“O Matthew! dearest!” she cried, starting forward, with her own face flashing almost as white as his own. “What is wrong? What is to happen to you?”
I scarcely caught his answer, it was so huskily spoken, but it seemed to me something like—
“The very worst that could happen to me.”
Then the young wife gave a low moan, and fell slowly forward in his arms. She had fainted, and her very helplessness, I believe, was all that kept him in his senses.
Mr Bannister rang for a servant, and had his wife removed, and then with a blanched face turned to me and said—