He found Furneaux seated on the lowermost step at the entrance; the Jerseyman was crying as if his heart would break, and Trenholme was trying to comfort him, but in vain.
"What's up now?" inquired the Superintendent, thinking at the moment that his friend and comrade was giving way to hysteria indirectly owing to the blow he had received.
Furneaux looked up. It was the darkest hour of the night, and his chief could not see the distraught features wrung with pain.
"James," he said, mastering his voice by a fierce effort, "my mad antics killed that unfortunate woman! She was aroused by the shots. She would cry for help, and none came. Heavens! I can hear her now! Then she ran for refuge to the man who had been everything to her since she was a barrack room kid in India. I'm done, old fellow. I resign. I can never show my face in the Yard again."
"It'll do you a world of good if you talk," said Winter, meaning to console, but unconsciously wounding by cruel sarcasm.
"I'll be dumb enough after this night's work," said Furneaux, in a tone of such utter dejection that Winter began to take him seriously.
"If you fail me now, Charles," he said, and his utterance was thick with anger at the crassness of things, "I'll consider the advisability of sending in my own papers. Dash it!" He said something quite different, but his friends may read this record, and they would repudiate an exact version with scorn and disbelief. "Are we going to admit ourselves beaten by a half-bred hound like Hilton Fenley? Not if I know it, or I know you. We've got the noose 'round his neck, and you and I will pull it tight if we have to follow him to——"
"Pardon the interruption, gentlemen," said a voice. "I was called out o' bed to come to the fire, an' took a short cut across the park. Blow me if I didn't kick my foot against this!"
And Police Constable Farrow, who had approached unnoticed, held out an object which seemed to be a rifle. Owing to his being seated Furneaux's eyes were on a level with it, and he could see more clearly than the others. He struck a match; then there could be no doubt that the policeman had actually picked up the weapon which had set in motion so many and such varied vicissitudes.