"Duncan Rothwell! Murdered--at my wife's--front door!"
The knife fell from his hand. He gave such a backward lurch that I half expected to see him fall down after it. In an instant, stooping, I had the knife in my grasp. I felt strongly that such a weapon was safer in my possession than in his. He did not seem for the moment to be conscious of what it was which he had lost and I had gained. He stood staring in front of him with an air of stupefaction. He repeated his own words over to himself, stammeringly, as if he were unable to catch their meaning: "Murdered--at my wife's--front door!"
"Where have you been living not to have heard of it? It has been the topic of every tongue."
I could see that he was struggling to collect his scattered senses. He spoke at last as if he were waking from a dream.
"I have heard nothing. I do not understand what you are talking about. Tell me everything."
I told him all that there was to tell. Evidently the whole of it was news to him. He listened greedily, gulping down, as it were, every word I uttered, as if I had been feeding him with physical food as well as mental. As I noted his demeanour, it seemed incredible that he could have been the chief actor in the tragedy to the details of which he listened with such apparently unfeigned amazement. I had been guilty of an unintentional injustice in doubting him. As I told my tale we leaned upon the parapet--he never looking at me once, but straight into the heart of the river.
When I had finished he was silent for some moment. Then he put to me a question:
"Do you mean to say that nothing has been found out to show who did it?"
"Absolutely nothing."
Unless I erred, he smiled. Had I not done him an injustice after all? Could the man be such a consummate actor?