The Silent Shore: A Romance

by John Bloundelle-Burton

They talked it over and over again, but they could arrive at no determination; and at last it was resolved that the best thing would be to let matters take their course. No announcement would be publicly made, and though, of course, it would, eventually leak out that Lord Penlyn was Walter Cundall's heir, the world would have to put its own construction upon the fact. Or again, other men had before now made eccentric wills, taking sudden fancies to people who were strangers to them and leaving them all their money. It would be best that Walter Cundall's will should also come to be regarded in that category.

"After all," Stuart said, "you were acquaintances, and mixed in the same circle. Even the fact that you both loved the same woman goes for something, and that must be sufficient for those who take any interest in the matter."

He had come into the house with innumerable suspicions against Lord Penlyn, suspicions aroused by his being the inheritor of Cundall's property, and also by the fact that he and the dead man had both loved the same woman, and with a strange feeling in his heart that, when he stood before him, he would stand before a murderer. He had also remembered that conversation in the club about the peculiarity of the dagger, or knife, with which Cundall must have been slain, and his recollection of the hesitating way in which Penlyn had answered, had added to his suspicions. But, when he had seen the genuine tears of sorrow that had been shed over the will, those suspicions vanished, and he told himself that it was not in this man that the murderer would be found. And, if this new-formed idea had required any strengthening, it would have received it when those importunate and threatening letters had been read from the unknown person signing himself, Corot. There was the man, who, if in England, must be found at all costs. But how to find him was the question.

"There is one to whom I must, at least, disclose my relationship with Walter," Penlyn said, and they both noticed that, for the first time, he spoke of his brother by his Christian name. "I must tell Miss Raughton the position we stood in to one another."

Stuart, with feelings of a very different nature now in his heart from those with which he had first regarded him, asked him if he thought it was wise to do so? Would she not think that, standing in the position of his affianced wife and having also been beloved by his brother, she should have been the first to be told of the bond between them?

"It may not be wise," Penlyn said sadly, and with a weary look upon his face, "and it may be that she will think I have deceived her--as, unhappily, I have done by my silence--but still I must tell her. With her, at least, there must be nothing more suppressed."

Then he told them of the strange dream that she had had (even mentioning that she had said she could recognise the form, if not the face, of the man who sprang upon him), and of the vow she had made him take to endeavour to discover the murderer.

"If dreams were of the slightest importance, which they are not," Mr. Fordyce said, "this one would go to prove that Corot is not the murderer, since it is hardly likely that she has ever known him. Still, it is a strange coincidence that she should have dreamt of his death on the very night that it took place."

"The idea of knowing the form, or figure, of the man is nothing," Stuart said. "If there was any likelihood of there being anything in that, it would also be the case that we should have to look upon Lady Chesterton's conservatory as the spot where it happened, as it was there she dreamt she saw him. But we know that he was killed in St. James' Park."

"If the detectives can only discover this man Corot," Penlyn said, "we might find out what he was doing on that night."