His darling sin

by M. E. Braddon

"Gospel truth. We were married at Battersea Church when I was just turned seventeen. I didn't care for him, and he's been a log round my neck ever since. But he was in luck just then, and he used to give me presents—bits of jewellery, and smart hats, and such-like—and he was the first as ever took notice of me and told me I was handsome. And he said he should take a cottage at Wandsworth, with a bit of garden, and I was to be missus, and have a girl to wait upon me. But his luck turned soon after our wedding—which was on the strict q.t.—and he never took that cottage, and we never told father or anybody else. Jim said our marriage was just a bit of a lark, and we'd best forget it; but when I had a fine house and was flush of money, and might have been Lady Withernsea for good and all, but for him, he didn't forget it. I know what blackmail means, Mr. Faunce. I have been paying it ever since I was eighteen. I had to find money for Bolisco when he wanted it, for he swore he'd claim me as his wife if I didn't. I've had what's-his-name's sword hanging over my head all these years, and I got to hate the man worse every year; and now I hate him—I hate him,—I hate him with every drop of blood in my veins! I turn cold when I hear his step on the stair. I never look at him without remembering that night, and my poor Dick lying on the ground, and Bolisco's wicked hands tearing open his coat and searching his pockets, like a wild beast mauling its prey."

"And you want to see him suffer for that brutal murder, don't you?"

"No; I want nothing but to have done with it all. Just to be out of it, that's what I want. Do you think if they were to hang Bolisco, it would set my mind at rest, or make me forget what a shrew I was to poor old Dick, and how he forgave me, and came back to me after I'd treated him so bad, and how I wrote the letter that lured him to his death? What do I care what becomes of Bolisco? Let him murder somebody else, and get nabbed for that. I don't care. Nothing will stop my bad dreams, till I fall asleep for the last time: and then, who knows? There may be bad dreams underground as well as above; or one long dream of hell-fire and worms that gnaw."

"Come, come, Mrs. Randall, you mustn't despair," Faunce said kindly.

He was sorry for her, and yet what comfort could he offer? He looked at her in her ruined beauty, and thought of her life, and the two men whose lives she had spoilt. She had sown the wind, and she was reaping the whirlwind, and he saw no hope for her in the black future.

What was he to do? He had come to her prepared to make his coup d'état, having calculated that he could startle her into a revelation of the murder, in which he believed her to have been an unwilling accessory. He had succeeded, but his success was worth nothing if this one all-important witness could not be heard.

He drove to Scotland Yard, put the facts of the case before the assistant-commissioner, and Bolisco was arrested late that night at the Game Cock, on suspicion of being concerned in the murder of Colonel Richard Rannock. The evidence against him, excluding Kate Delmaine's confession, was weak, but there was no time to lose, as she was likely to warn him of his danger.

If the numbers of the notes he had changed could be identified with Chater's list, there would be strong presumptive evidence against him, and other facts might come to light on inquiry to strengthen the chain of circumstance. Faunce relinquished the case to the Public Prosecutor. It had passed beyond the region of private interests. A murder so atrocious concerned the world at large, and the conviction of the murderer was a matter of public importance.

One most painful duty Faunce had to perform, and he set about it with a heavy heart. He had to tell Mrs. Rannock the story of her son's death. Soften the details as he might, it was a terrible story to tell, and he decided that it would be better for her son-in-law to be the bearer of these dismal tidings.

He called on Major Towgood, whom he found in a small house nearer Vauxhall Bridge than Eccleston Square, but by courtesy in Belgravia. The Major received him in a little den darkened by a monster pile of red brick flats, which he called the library.