“I thought so last evening, and see it clearly to-day,” said Lionel.
“Let him have a care, Lionel, how he tampers with the name and fame of the house of Verner. By heavens I will punish him! The thing is absurd on the face of it.”
“I suppose the idea is that a man found by the side of one who is murdered should be able to give a succinct account of his death.”
“Once a policeman starts a theory of his own respecting any particular crime, he thinks of nothing else; he follows no clue which does not support that theory; he rejects all evidence that may tell against it; his leading idea is that somebody must be apprehended and convicted for it; and this Brazencrook fellow is a shallow-pated, ambitious booby, whose fingers are itching to have a distinguished prisoner; he is anxious to create a sensation,” said the Earl.
And so they continued to talk the affair over, whilst the gossips in the neighbourhood and throughout the country theorised upon it, and cleared up the mystery in their own way. Meanwhile, Lady Verner, to all appearance, continued very ill, and no word concerning recent events was to be whispered in her hearing; but when there was no one present but her maid she brightened up and insisted upon hearing of all that had occurred. Lady Verner was not so ill as she seemed.
At night when the shallow-pated and ambitious policeman, as Earl Verner called him, was smoking his pipe over his own fire, and relating the incidents of the day to his admiring wife, an assistant in the shop of the leading gunsmith of the place knocked at the door and wished to see the superintendent privately and on particular business.
“I come as an act of duty,” said the young man, “although I know I shall lose my place by it, for the master dared and forbade me to come to you.”
“Yes,” said the officer, shutting the door of his private office, and taking his seat at his desk beneath a long row of handcuffs and cutlasses.
“Captain Hammerton bought two pistols at our shop to-day.”
“Yes,” said the officer, writing down the words, the name of the assistant, the name of the master, &c.