With the assassination of the Custos, however, it was different. Circumstances had caused that event to be hurried, and there was danger—as Chakra himself had admitted—that the spell of Obi might be mistaken for a spell of poison. A death so sudden, and by natural causes inexplicable, would, undoubtedly, provoke speculation, and lead to the opening and examining of the body.
Chakra knew that inside would be found something stronger than even the sap of the Savanna flower or the branched calalue; and that in all probability the malady to which the Custos had succumbed would be pronounced murder.
With this upon his mind, he was not without apprehension—his fears pointing to Cynthia.
Not that he suspected the honesty of his confederate; but only that her consistency might be too weak to withstand the cross-questioning of a coroner.
Fearing this, he had scarce got out of sight of the Custos’s corpse before he commenced contriving how Cynthia’s tongue could be tied—in other words, how the mulatta was to be made away with.
Upon this design his thoughts were for the moment bent.
He had less, if any, apprehension about his other accomplice in the crime. He fancied that Jessuron was himself too deeply dyed to point out the spots upon his fellow-conspirator; and this rendered him confident of secrecy on the part of the Jew.
Neither did he dwell long upon the danger to be apprehended from Cynthia, and so trivial a matter as the silencing of her tongue soon became obliterated or blended with another and far more important project, to the execution of which he was now hastening.
On leaving the hut where lay the dead body of his victim, he had taken to by-paths and bushes. Only for a short time did he keep to these. The twilight rapidly darkening into night left the highway free to him; and, availing himself of this privilege, he returned to it—showing by his hurried steps, as he regained the road, that he was glad to escape from a circuitous path.
His face once more set towards the Trelawney hills, he walked in silence, and with a rapidity scarce credible—his long, ape-like legs, split trestle fashion to the centre of his body, enabling him to glide over the ground almost as fast as a mule could mince.