He toiled at it night and day and held aloof from his kind. The publicity of his connection with the murder sickened him. He took cabs to and from his chambers lest his ears should be irritated by railway-carriage discussions. Minna he saw once, at the inquest, dressed in black, closely veiled, attended by the old Syrian woman. For appearance sake he had conducted her to her brougham. Had asked her one question on the way thither: Was she staying at The Lindens? She replied in the affirmative. She had hitherto refused offers of friendly asylums. Anna’s sympathy and protection sufficed her. What might happen later she did not know. Perhaps she would accompany Anna to Smyrna. The inquest resulted in a verdict of wilful murder against some person unknown. The next day he attended the funeral, walked, a haughty and tortured Gentile, amid a host of serene and money-lending Jews. The papers naturally reported the fact.
He did not go to the Merriams. Gerard’s arrival in town was the occasion of a peremptory command to dinner from Irene. He declined, alleging press of work. Gerard, sent by Irene for tidings of the absentee, burst in upon him at ten o’clock that night and found him sitting with dishevelled hair on the edge of a tumultuous sea of brief papers. The genuineness of his excuse was obvious.
He forced, however, his visitor into a chair, handed the tobacco jar and poured out whiskeys and sodas. Gerard eyed the quantum of spirits in Hugh’s glass; also noticed the corkscrew in the cork of the three parts emptied whiskey bottle.
“I say, you’re going it pretty strong, aren’t you?” he remarked, with a significant nod. “What is the matter—work—worry?”
“Both,” said Hugh, putting down his tumbler and sweeping his moist moustache in his fierce way.
“The work to get over the worry, and the whiskey to get over the work.”
“What’s the worry—this Hart affair?”
“I suppose so. It has got on my nerves.”
“I can’t see why the devil it should,” said Gerard, with a little contemptuous laugh. He was of that kind of men who deny the existence of nerves.
“By the way,” he added, after awhile, “they were damned slack at that inquest—I was just saying so to Renie—with the safe open and ledgers and things lying about the table when the old man was found, had I been the coroner, I should have wanted to know the subject of your last conversation with the deceased.”