“It was the man I saw in my dream: the man who had committed the murder in it.”
I stared at her, wondering whether she had lost her wits.
“Do you remember the description I gave of that man?” she continued, in excitement. “I do. I wrote it down at the time, and Mr. Todhetley holds it, sealed up. Every word, every particular is in my memory now, as I saw him in my dream. ‘A tall, evil-looking, dark man in a long brown coat, who walked with his eyes fixed on the ground.’ I tell you, Johnny Ludlow, that is the man.”
Her vehemence infected me. I looked round after Sir Dace. He was turning this way now. Certainly the description seemed like enough. His countenance just now did look an evil one; and he was tall and he was dark, and he wore a long brown coat this morning, nearly reaching to his heels, and his eyes were fixed on the ground as he walked.
“But what if his looks do tally with the man you saw in your dream, Alice? What of it?”
“What of it!” she echoed, vehemently. “What of it! Why, don’t you see, Johnny Ludlow? This man must have killed Edward Pym.”
“Hush, Alice! It is impossible. This is Sir Dace Fontaine.”
“I do not care who he is,” was her impulsive retort. “As surely as that Heaven is above us, Edward Pym got his death at the hand of this man. My dream revealed it to me.”
I might as well have tried to stem a torrent as to argue with her; so I drove on and held my tongue. Arrived at the office of Paul and Chandler, I following her in, leaving a boy with the pony outside. Alice pounced upon old Paul with the assertion: Sir Dace Fontaine was the evil and guilty man she had seen in her dream. Considering that Paul was a sort of cousin to Sir Dace’s late wife, this was pretty well. Old Paul stared at her as I had done. Her cheeks were hectic, her eyes wildly earnest. She recalled to the lawyer’s memory the dream she had related to him; she asserted in the most unqualified manner that Dace Fontaine was guilty. Tom Chandler, who was old Paul’s partner and had married his daughter Emma, came into the room in the middle of it, and took his share of staring.