Mrs. Halliburton's Troubles

by Mrs. Henry Wood

The most suspicious evidence, referring to Herbert, was the cloak. The sergeant had examined it curiously, with compressed lips. Herbert disposed of this, so far as he was concerned—that is, if he was to be believed. He said that he had put his cloak on, had gone out in it as far as the entrance gate; but finding it warmer than was agreeable, he had turned back, and flung it on to the dining-room table, going in, as he had come out, through the window. He added, as a little bit of confirmatory evidence, that he remembered seeing the cloak begin to slide off the table again, that he saw it must fall to the ground; but, being in a hurry, he would not stop to prevent its doing so, or to pick it up.

The sergeant never seemed to take his sidelong glance from Herbert Dare. He had gone to work in his own way; hearing the different accounts and conjectures, sifting this bit of evidence, turning about that, holding a whispered colloquy with the man who had been sent to examine Herbert's room: holding a longer whispered colloquy with Herbert himself. On the departure of the surgeon and Mr. Brittle, who had gone away together, he had marched to the front and side doors of the house, locked them, and put the keys into his pocket. "Nobody goes out of this without my permission," quoth he.

Then he took Mr. Dare aside. "There's no mistake about this, I fear," said he gravely.

Mr. Dare knew what he meant. He himself was growing grievously faint-hearted. But he would not say so; he would not allow it to be seen that he cast, or could cast, a suspicion on Herbert. "It appears to me that—that—if poor Anthony was in the state they describe, that he may have sat down or laid down after entering the dining-room, and dropped asleep," observed Mr. Dare. "Easy, then—the window being left open—for some midnight housebreaker from the street to have come in and attacked him."

"Pooh!" said Sergeant Delves. "It is no housebreaker that has done this. We have a difficult line of duty to perform at times, us police; and all we can do to soften matters, is to go to work as genteelly as is consistent with the law. I'm sorry to have to say it, Mr. Dare, but I have felt obliged to order my men to keep a look-out on Mr. Herbert."

A chill ran through Mr. Dare. "It could not have been Herbert!" he rejoined, his tone one of pain, almost of entreaty. "Mr. Glenn says it could not have been done later than half-past eleven, or so. Herbert never came home until nearly two."

"Who is to prove that he was not at home till near two?"

"He says he was not. I have no doubt it can be proved. And poor Anthony was dead more than two hours before."

"Now, look you here," cried Sergeant Delves, falling back on a favourite phrase of his. "Mr. Glenn is correct enough as to the time of the occurrence: I have had some experience in death myself, and I'm sure he is not far out. But let that pass. Here are witnesses who saw him alive at half-past eleven o'clock, and you come home at two and find him dead. Now, let your son Herbert thus state where he was from half-past eleven till two. He says he was out: not near home at all. Very good. Only let him mention the place, so that we can verify it, and find, beyond dispute, that he was out, and the suspicion against him will be at an end. But he won't do this."

"Not do it?" echoed Mr. Dare.