"' I will not endure this any longer. They have conspired to rob and murder me. But I will evade them for good. In ten seconds more I shall empty the chloroform on my beard. In twenty minutes I shall be dead.---Louis Davenport.'
"This is unmistakably in the handwriting of the deceased. The piece of paper on which it is written corresponds with a blank in Mr. Davenport's pocket-book. The writing was done with a metal pencil, and the paper is remarkably tough. When he had finished the writing, he carried out his threat of spilling the chloroform over his beard and waistcoat. Between this and the time during which the drug began to exercise its fatal influence he must have changed his mind, not, indeed, as regards suicide, but as regards his confession; for he swallowed the piece of paper on which the confession was written, and wrote on another leaf in the same book these words:
"' Pretended death. Blake gone. He emptied chloroform on me. Can't stir. Dying.'
"At the post-mortem examination the former paper was produced. It had been masticated and swallowed. The other leaf of the pocket-book had been found in the waistcoat-pocket of deceased. The certainty of the former leaf having been written first rests on the fact that the latter leaf has on it a faint but sufficient trace of the writing on the former, the degree of force used in writing the longer communication being sufficient to mark the leaf following. The post-mortem clearly proved that chloroform was the cause of death."
This was astonishing news. By it not only was all shadow of suspicion removed from Mrs. Davenport, but Blake was vindicated. The stories told by Mrs. Davenport and Blake had been confirmed in the most amazing and unexpected manner. It seemed little short, if at all short, of a miracle. This strange account of deceased's mental illness in Florence was true. Who placed any value whatever on it when it was given by Blake on oath? It then seemed nothing better than an audacious and unnecessary lie. It had turned Alfred sick while he listened to it. As he heard that self-possessed, aggressive man give evidence, he felt the toils closing round the unhappy woman. Now, in all likelihood, these toils had for ever vanished into air, and Mrs. Davenport was as free from suspicion of complicity in her husband's murder as though the two had never in all their lives met.
He asked his sister if she knew anything about Mrs. Davenport. Madge had an idea that Mrs. Davenport was still staying at Jermyn Street. Young Paulton asked nothing about Blake. He was not concerned about him.
It was very hard to be obliged to lie inactive here while---- He paused to think. While what? That question staggered him. The interest in the inquest was all over, and no other trial was likely to arise out of the matter. Accident had for a while connected him with some affairs of Mrs. Davenport, and now that accident was at an end. There was no longer any chance of his being of use to her. Nothing could be more natural than that she had forgotten him by this time. In the excitement and heat of that ordeal there was nothing more likely than that she should forget him absolutely.
But the case was different with him. He could not forget her. He could never forget her--no, not if he lived a hundred years. Were they destined to meet never again? That was a dreary question to ask and have to leave unanswered, while he lay weak and powerless here.
He should get well no doubt in time, but this in time was such a weary, dead, tedious thing. It would be infinitely depressing and irksome to have to live here day after day pulling up strength. How was it possible for him to recover if his mind were haunted by doubts and anxieties?
Doubts about what? Anxieties about whom? He was not in love with this woman. The notion of being in love with her was absurd. He had seen her but on three occasions, and then the meetings had been brief and full of anything but tenderness. He had heard and thought much of her in the few days since their first meeting. He should never forget their first meeting. Could he ever blot out from his memory the regal beauty and pose of her as she stood in that dreary hall and pointed out the room in which her husband lay dead? Ah, well, nothing could come of such thinking now!