The two went in, and found the journalist scribbling against time. Hart coolly grabbed a few slips of manuscript, and commenced reading. Grant looked about for Doris. She was not visible, but Mr. Martin, pallid and nervous, nodded toward the sitting-room. The younger man, taking the gesture as a tacit invitation, entered the room.
Doris was sitting there, crying bitterly. Poor girl! She had seen that portion of the drama which was enacted in the street, and the shock of it was still poignant. She looked up and met her lover’s eyes. Neither uttered a word, but Grant did a very wise thing. He caught her by the shoulders, raised her to her feet, and, after kissing her squarely on the lips, gave her a comforting hug.
“It will be all right now, Doris,” he whispered tenderly. “Such thunderstorms clear the air.”
An eminent novelist might have found many more ornate ways of avowing his sentiments, but never a more satisfactory one. At any rate, it served, so what more need be said?
Certain rills of evidence accumulated into a fair-sized stream before night fell. P. C. Robinson, for instance, scored a point by ascertaining that Peggy Smith had seen Furneaux dropping from the bedroom window of the chemist’s shop. She was some hundreds of yards away, and could not be positive that some man, perhaps a glazier, had not been there legitimately effecting repairs. Still, when she met Siddle hurrying from the station, she told him of the incident.
“He never even thanked me,” she said, “but broke into a run. The look in his eyes was awful.”
The girl had, in fact, confirmed his worst fears, and her neighborly solicitude had merely hastened the end.
Again, the railway officials showed that Siddle had returned from Victoria instead of taking train to the asylum. Furneaux had guessed aright. The discovery that his keys had been left behind drove the man into a panic of fright.
It took nearly three weeks before the unhappy business was finally disposed of. A Treasury solicitor was given the chance of his career by the medico-legal disquisition which cleared up an extraordinary record. The annals of the disease which predisposed Theodore Siddle to crime went back many years. He was a fairly wealthy man by inheritance, and adopted the profession of chemistry as a hobby. One fact stood out boldly. He was aware of his hereditary taint, and had settled down in Steynholme believing that a quiet life, free from care or the distractions of a town, would enable him to overcome it. Probably, the lawyer held, the man owned two distinct individualities, and the baser instincts gradually overpowered the humane ones.
Of course, the whole history of those trying days had to come out in open court, and the postmaster’s daughter was given a descriptive and pictorial boom which many an actress envied. Peters was restored to grace when he showed plainly that his articles had kept the fickle barometer of public opinion at “set fair,” in so far as Grant and Doris were concerned.