As Shagarach foretold, Bertha had been spirited away. Mrs. Christenson, the intelligence offices, the Swedish consul, the Lutheran pastor, were all visited and revisited by Emily, especially since the new inspiration seized her, but none of them knew the address of the housemaid since she left Hillsborough that morning on an outward-bound train. The only rumor of her whereabouts was that vague report, coming from the bakeshop girl, which Dr. Silsby had set out to investigate.
With regard to the Arnolds' coachman, who had driven their carriage on the day of the fire, Emily considered Shagarach to be curiously indifferent. He had promised to subpoena the man for the trial, but that was all. Yet his testimony was crucial, since he must know whether Harry was with his mother in the vehicle.
This was a peculiarity of Shagarach's, in which he differed again from McCausland. Though he prepared his defense with consummate painstaking, when it came his turn to prosecute an unwilling witness, he seemed satisfied to know the truth in his own mind, relying upon his genius to extort a confession during the cross-examination. With a perjurer before him he wielded the lash like a slave-driver, and perhaps he was justified in this case in omitting a rehearsal which would only put the Arnolds on their guard.
But Emily's greatest disappointment came in what seemed to her the one weak point of Robert's defense, the axis around which the entire prosecution revolved. Time and again she had conferred with Shagarach on the subject of her lover's reverie after the deed. To think that he could not remember a face he had seen, an incident, a word spoken, during those four hours—nothing but a vague itinerary of the afternoon, which came out with difficulty each time, and the course of his own meditations, which, to tell the truth, was clear and copious enough, but worthless for the purpose.
At her last visit to the lawyer's home he had entered into this more deeply. Apparently the method of attacking the enigma, which he had hinted at possessing from the very first, was now ripened. For he loaned Emily a ponderous volume on "Diseases of the Memory," and asked her to bring in all the evidence possible showing the mutual affection of nephew and uncle, not failing to wear the water lily from time to time, as he had suggested before. But she was not satisfied with this, and, knowing Robert had visited the park, spent one whole Sunday making a tour of that district, questioning each of the gray-coated policemen.
At last she had found an officer who recollected "something of such a young man as she described." He "couldn't swear to it," but "had an idea he noticed him." In fact, his recollection grew vaguer and vaguer the more they tried to make it specific, and to Emily's chagrin, when they brought him to the jail, he asserted positively that Robert was not the man. This disappointment was sharpened tenfold by her meeting Inspector McCausland, passing out of the corridor, arm in arm with a car conductor.
"I am certain that was my passenger," the conductor was saying. To have her own failure and McCausland's success thus brought into contact accentuated both and gave Emily a miserable day.
The case of the old chemist was not so bad, and besides, was none of Emily's doing. John Davidson, the marshal, had taken up Shagarach's theory of Harry Arnold's guilt with remarkable zeal and had borrowed one of the photographs, so as to see if he could be of use. One day he came in, greatly excited, and asked for the lawyer.
"Got some evidence that'll surprise you, brother," said the marshal.
"Then it must be extraordinary," answered Shagarach.