“So it does, except upon one supposition; I mean that the man believes his story,” said Mr. Longcluse, walking beside him, for they had resumed their march towards the gate.
“Really! believes that you committed the murder?” said Uncle David, again coming to a halt and looking full at him.
“I can't quite account for it otherwise,” said Longcluse; “and I think the right course is for me to meet him. But I have no intimacies in London, and that is my difficulty.”
“How? Why don't you arrest him?” said David Arden.
David Arden had seldom felt so oddly. A quarter-of-an-hour since, he expected to have been seated in his carriage with his ward and Vivian Darnley, driving into town in quiet humdrum fashion, by this time. How like a dream was the actual scene! Here he was, standing on the grass among the noble timber, under the moonlight, with the pale face beside him which had begun to haunt him so oddly. The strange smile of his mysterious companion, the cold tone that jarred sweetly, somehow, on his ear, lending a sinister eccentricity to the extraordinary confession he was making.
In this situation, which had come about almost unaccountably, there was a strange feeling of unreality. Was this man, from whom he had felt an indescribable repulsion, now by his side, and drawing him, in this solitude, into a mysterious confidence? and had not this confidence an unaccountable though distant relation to the vague suspicions that had touched his mind? With a little effort he resumed,—
“I beg pardon, but if the case were mine I should put the letters at once into the hands of the police and prosecute him.”
“Precisely my own first impulse. But the letters are more cautiously framed than you might at first sight suppose. I should be placed in an awkward position were my prosecution to fail. I am obliged to think of this because, although I am nothing to the public, I am a good deal to myself. But I've resolved to take a course not less bold, though less public. I am determined to meet him face to face with an unexceptionable witness present, and to discover distinctly whether he acts from fraud or delusion, and then to proceed accordingly. I have communicated with him.”
“Oh, really!”
“Yes, I was clear I ought to meet him, but I would consent to nothing with an air of concealment.”