“Not until this morning.”
“What the deuce is the good of that?” said the officer angrily; for he was greatly disappointed. He had hoped that the next moment when he should produce the pistol found in the ruins, the gunsmith’s assistant would identify it.
“That will do—thank you all the same, though there is nothing much in it; however it may be useful; if so you shall hear from me again.”
When the officious apprentice had gone, the Brazencrook chief leaned back in his chair and soliloquised.
“It shows he was thinking of pistols, at any rate—that is something; he had deadly weapons in his mind. Not much in that perhaps, being a soldier, but put this and that together. And then about going to London to-day. Ha! I must get at that point. I’m morally certain he killed the man, and Lady Verner knows something about it. There was a quarrel, something about her perhaps; she is pretty and young, and——”
Another knock at the door, and enter a gentleman whom we have seen before, though a stranger to the chief of the Brazencrook police—Mr. Bales from Scotland Yard.
The Brazencrook officer was delighted to receive so distinguished a visitor.
Mr. Bales said he knew something of the murdered man and his connections, and on making certain representations at head-quarters, he had come down “on spec,” in fact, “on his own hook.” A large reward would, no doubt, be offered for the discovery of the murderer, for it was a case of murder,—nobody in their senses could doubt that—and Lord Verner would, of course, second the Government efforts to clear up the mystery.
The local officer said, mysteriously, he was not so sure of that; he believed he was on the right track; if such should prove to be the case, of course, he would have the reward, or at any rate the greatest share of it.
“Certainly,” said Mr. Bales, “certainly; I have not come down here to rob you, my friend.”