“No, no!” she cried, “not in that house! For the love of God, don’t take me back into that room! Ah! For pity’s sake, let me stay outside! Take me to prison but not, not into that house again!”
She half fell on her knees in the mire, pleading, entreating, her body shaken by sobs.
Then Harrison, who was an ex-Guardsman and a six-footer at that, plucked her off her feet and carried her, still struggling, still imploring with piteous cries, over the threshold into the house: Matthews followed behind.
The shutters of the tap-room were still closed. Only a strip of the dirty floor, strewn with sawdust, was illuminated by a bar of reddish light from the daybreak outside. On the table a candle, burnt down to the socket of its brass candlestick, flared and puttered in a riot of running wax. Half in the bar of daylight from outside, half in the darkness beyond the open door, against which the flickering candlelight struggled feebly, lay the body of a yellow-faced, undersized man with a bullet wound through the temple.
Without effort Harrison deposited his light burden on her feet by the table. Instantly, the girl fled, like some frightened animal of the woods, to the farthest corner of the room. Here she dropped sobbing on her knees, rocking herself to and fro in a sort of paroxysm of hysteria. Harrison moved quickly round the table after her; but he was checked by a cry from Matthews who was kneeling by the body.
“Let her be,” said Matthews, “she’s scared of this and no wonder! Come here a minute, Harrison, and see if you know, this chap!”
Harrison crossed the room and looked down at the still figure. He whistled softly.
“My word!” he said, “but he copped it all right, sir! Ay, I know him well enough! He’s Rass, the landlord of this pub, that’s who he is, as harmless a sort of chap as ever was! Who did it, d’you think, sir?”
Matthews, who had been going through the dead man’s pockets, now rose to his feet.
“Nothing worth writing home about there,” he said half aloud. Then to Harrison, he added: “That’s what we’ve got to discover... hullo, who’s this?”