Tales of the Wonder Club, Volume II

by M. Y. Halidom

Where did all that blood come from? he asked himself. He must be wounded he thought. However, he examined himself all over and could discover nothing. The barrel of his gun was discharged, too, and the butt end of it stained with blood. He was more bewildered than ever. He then related the whole of the circumstances to his parents, who, however, could not bring themselves to believe otherwise than that their son must have been intoxicated, although his character for sobriety was well known.

The blood stains, however, and the discharged barrel still remained a mystery and became the subject of much conjecture amongst his friends. The blood, as he owned himself, did not proceed from any wound he had received. Whose blood was it then? The butt end of his gun being stained with blood would argue violence used against some person or animal.

John was known to be an honest and humane man—the very last man in the world to commit murder; still, under the influence of intoxication he might have committed a rash act. When questioned as to whether he remembered anything, he shook his head, and merely related his interview with the pedlar, from whom he felt confident of not having accepted more than one glass of wine. His manner throughout all this questioning was open and frank, and everyone agreed that, mysterious as the affair appeared, they were quite sure that young Archer was innocent of murder.

The day after, however, a waggoner's dog passing by the scene of the murder was observed by its master to be sniffing and burrowing in a certain ditch. The waggoner took no notice of the circumstance at first, until the dog set up a howl and refused to leave the spot. It then seemed to be tearing or dragging some heavy substance with its teeth, and finally succeeded in leaving bare the body of the pedlar. The pedlar had already been missed in the village, and the waggoner at once recognised the body. He lost no time in rousing the neighbourhood, for he dreaded being discovered near the corpse, lest he should be implicated in the murder.

The body of the pedlar was removed to the nearest cottage, and a surgeon sent for immediately to examine it. Contrary to everybody's expectation, the surgeon pronounced that life was not yet extinct, though he held out no hopes at all of ultimate recovery.

He did all he could do under the circumstances, gave his instructions to the inmates of the cottage, and said that he would call again. Then arose the question, who could be the perpetrator of the deed? Suspicion immediately attached itself to John Archer.

Witnesses came forward and deposed that they had met John Archer with blood on his clothes and the butt end of his rifle also stained with blood. The wounds on the head of the all-but murdered man appeared to have been inflicted by the butt end of a rifle, therefore this was strong evidence; but there was yet stronger. The bullet having been extracted from the dying man's shoulder, was at once recognised by all as belonging to John Archer, his bullets being marked always in a peculiar manner, added to which it fitted exactly into the bore of Archer's rifle.

This last evidence was considered conclusive, and John Archer was conducted off to prison to await his trial at the next assizes. Imagine the grief and dismay of poor John's aged parents, who had looked forward to his being the prop of their old age, at hearing that their only son had been arrested on a charge of murder. Imagine the shame and confusion of John himself, the surprise and indignation of his intimate friends, including ourselves, who still believed in his innocence.

As for poor Claribel, she was struck completely dumb at the news; she could not believe her ears. It was not for a considerable time that she could realise the fact; but when she did, she neither fainted, burst into tears, nor behaved in any way extravagantly. Her grief was too deeply seated. She moped about the house with her eyes fixed, as if she were walking in her sleep. It was just this calm, in a nature like hers, that I dreaded far more than any violent transport of grief, for I feared that the shock had been too great for her, and had turned her brain. What made the affair doubly painful to her was that the village people had already begun to couple her name with John Archer's.

Folks speaking of the arrest would say that it was Claribel Falkland's young man that had been arrested for murder, although there had never been anything like an engagement between them.