“And in God’s name, why whiskers?” cried Morris, pointing in a ghastly manner at his cousin. “Does my brain reel? How whiskers?”
“O, that’s a matter of detail,” said Michael.
There was another silence, during which Morris appeared to himself to be shot in a trapeze as high as St. Paul’s, and as low as Baker Street Station.
“Let us recapitulate,” said Michael, “unless it’s really a dream, in which case I wish Teena would call me for breakfast. My friend Pitman, here, received a barrel which, it now appears, was meant for you. The barrel contained the body of a man. How or why you killed him....”
“I never laid a hand on him,” protested Morris. “This is what I have dreaded all along. But think, Michael! I’m not that kind of man; with all my faults, I wouldn’t touch a hair of anybody’s head, and it was all dead loss to me. He got killed in that vile accident.”
Suddenly Michael was seized by mirth so prolonged and excessive that his companions supposed beyond a doubt his reason had deserted him. Again and again he struggled to compose himself, and again and again laughter overwhelmed him like a tide. In all this maddening interview there had been no more spectral feature than this of Michael’s merriment; and Pitman and Morris, drawn together by the common fear, exchanged glances of anxiety.
“Morris,” gasped the lawyer, when he was at last able to articulate, “hold on, I see it all now. I can make it clear in one word. Here’s the key: I never guessed it was Uncle Joseph till this moment.”
This remark produced an instant lightening of the tension for Morris. For Pitman it quenched the last ray of hope and daylight. Uncle Joseph, whom he had left an hour ago in Norfolk Street, pasting newspaper cuttings?—it?—the dead body?—then who was he, Pitman? and was this Waterloo Station or Colney Hatch?
“To be sure!” cried Morris; “it was badly smashed, I know. How stupid not to think of that! Why, then, all’s clear; and, my dear Michael, I’ll tell you what—we’re saved, both saved. You get the tontine—I don’t grudge it you the least—and I get the leather business, which is really beginning to look up. Declare the death at once, don’t mind me in the smallest, don’t consider me; declare the death, and we’re all right.”