"'She renounced me then, rather than renounce that guilty wretch,' I thought; 'she will hate me now that I have been the means of bringing his most hideous crime to light.'
"Yes, the crime was hideous—almost unparalleled in horror. The treachery which had lured the victim to his death seemed almost less horrible than the diabolical art which had fixed upon the name of the murdered man the black stigma of a suspected crime.
"But I knew too well that, in all the blackness of his guilt, Margaret Wilmot would cling to her father as truly, as tenderly, as she had clung to him in those early days when the suspicion of his worthlessness had been only a dark shadow for ever brooding between the man and his only child. I knew this, and I had no hope that she would ever forgive me for my part in the weaving of that strange chain of evidence which made the condemnation of Joseph Wilmot.
"These were the thoughts that tormented me during the first fortnight after my return from the miserable journey to Winchester; these were the thoughts for ever revolving in my tired brain while I waited for tidings from the detective.
"During all that time it never once occurred to me that there was any chance, however remote, of Joseph Wilmot's escape from his pursuer.
"I had seen the science of the detective police so invariably triumphant over the best-planned schemes of the most audacious criminals, that I should have considered—had I ever debated the question, which I never did—Joseph Wilmot's evasion of justice an actual impossibility. It was most likely that he would be taken at Maudesley Abbey entirely unprepared, in his ignorance of the fatal discovery at Winchester; an easy prey to the experienced detective.
"Indeed, I thought that his immediate arrest was almost a certainty; and every morning, when I took up the papers, I expected to see a prominent announcement to the effect that the long-undiscovered Winchester mystery was at last solved, and that the murderer had been taken by one of the detective police.
"But the papers gave no tidings of Joseph Wilmot; and I was surprised, at the end of a week's time, to read the account of a detective's skirmish on board a schooner some miles off Hull, which had resulted in the drowning of one Stephen Vallance, an old offender. The detective's name was given as Henry Carter. Were there two Henry Carters in the small band of London detective police? or was it possible that my Henry Carter could have given up so profitable a prize as Joseph Wilmot in order to pursue unknown criminals upon the high seas? A week after I had read of this mysterious adventure, Mr. Carter made his appearance at Clapham, very grave of aspect and dejected of manner.
"'It's no use, sir,' he said; 'it's humiliating to an officer of my standing in the force; but I'd better confess it freely. I've been sold, sir—sold by a young woman too, which makes it three times as mortifying, and a kind of insult to the male sex in general!'
"My heart gave a great throb.