"And I believe you," was the hearty response. "And I have told everybody, from the first, that the charge was wicked and preposterous."
"Thank you, Mrs. Gass."
He broke away from any further questions she might have put, and stalked on towards Dallory, coolly saying that he had a patient to see.
As to the crowd, they really did not know what to make of it: it was a shameful cheat. The small staff of officials, including the police, seemed to know as little. To be enabled to take Oliver Rane into custody for poisoning his wife they must first find the wife, and ascertain whether she really had been poisoned. Lawyer Dale had never met with so bewildering a check in the long course of his practice; the red-faced Inspector stroked his chin, and the old magistrate clearly had not recovered his proper mind yet.
By the appearance of the shell, it seemed evident that the body had never been there at all. What had he done with it?--where could he have hidden it? A thought crossed Mr. Jekyll, experienced in crime, that the doctor might have concealed it in his house--or buried it in his garden.
"How was it you did not feel the lightness of the shell when you put it into the lead, you and your men?" asked the Inspector, turning sharply upon Thomas Hepburn.
"We did not do it," was the undertaker's answer. "Dr. Rane undertook that himself, on account of the danger of infection. We went and soldered the lead down, but it was all ready for us."
A clearer proof of guilt, than this fact conveyed, could not well be found: as they all murmured one to another. The old magistrate rubbed up his hair, as if by that means he could also rub up his intellect.
"I don't understand," he said, still bewildered. "Why should he have kept her out of the coffin? If he did what was wrong--surely to bury her out of sight would be the safest place to hide away his crime. What do you think about it, Jekyll?"
"Well, your worship, I can only think that he might have feared some such proceeding as this, and so secured himself against it," was the Inspector's answer. "I don't know, of course: it is only an idea."