"I SHALL BE READY FOR MY DEATH WHEN
THEY ARE READY FOR IT!"
That evening, when Richard Pringle ascertained Alfred Paulton had
left the "Wolfdog Inn," he came to the conclusion that he had
hastened home with an account of the day's proceedings. He resolved
to go and seek Mrs. Davenport at once.
He had ordered a carriage to be in readiness to take her and him back
to London. Since she had finished giving her evidence, she had
remained in the private room upstairs. The rain was now falling
heavily.
As the solicitor stood on the doorstep under the portico bidding
Jerry O'Brien good-evening, he saw the two men, who looked like
stable-helpers, go up to Tom Blake and speak to him. He had noticed
these men during the day, and when he saw them speak to Blake, he
knew what their business with him was.
On a motion from one of the two, a cab drew up a little way from the
door of the inn. Tom Blake and the two men got into it, and the cab
drove off. Then Pringle went back into the inn, spoke a few words to
the police inspector, and sent up word to Mrs. Davenport that he and
the carriage were ready.
In a few minutes she came down, looking as calm and impassible as
ever. With some commonplace remarks about the rain, he handed her in,
and then took his seat beside her.
For a while they drove in perfect silence. She broke it by asking
what had occurred since she left the room downstairs.
He briefly told her the substance of Blake's evidence, softening down
the sentimental portions as far as they had relation to herself, but
setting forth fully and fairly the salient points of his history.
She listened without a word. She had heard the coroner say the
inquiry would not close that day. She therefore knew nothing final
was to be decided immediately. But although Pringle knew she was
aware of this, he was surprised that upon his ending she said
nothing, made no comment, seemed but sparingly interested, although
she listened with attention. At last he thought best to volunteer
something.
"I am afraid," he said, "that although we may be able to corroborate
every word of Mr. Blake's, as far as facts are concerned, his
hypothesis will not have much influence with the jury."
"Why?"
"Did you know Mr. Blake got money from Mr. Davenport on the very
night of the 17th?"
In the darkness of the carriage here, he was free from the spell of
her beauty, and spoke in a purely professional tone.
"I did," she answered. "Mr. Blake told me."
"That admission took me by surprise. It would greatly facilitate the
discharge of my duty towards you if you would even _now_ take me a
little more fully into your confidence."
"There is nothing farther to tell--nothing further to conceal," she
said, in a slow, emotionless voice.
He threw himself back, and did not speak at once. At length he moved
uneasily in his place, and said, after deliberation:
"I appealed to you once, and cautioned you several times. I may now
tell you, as a matter of certainty, not as a matter of my own
personal opinion, but of ascertained fact, that the theory of what I
_must_ now call the defence will not stand a trial, and that a trial
there will be."
"I have nothing to add," she said, in an unmoved tone.
"Up to this I have not told you the most unpleasant, the most
significant and alarming fact of all."
"What is that?"--in the same voice.
"I hope you will try and face the horrible position with fortitude. I
spoke of a trial as now inevitable."
"You mean something more than this inquest?"--in the same tone, but a
little more deliberately.
"Yes. This is only an inquiry into the place, time, and cause of
death. No one is on trial for a crime as yet."
"You mean"--without any variation in accent--"that some one will be
tried for the murder of my late husband?"
He was silent.
She put her next question in a perfectly cold and steady manner:
"You mean that I will be tried for the murder of my late husband?"
"Great heavens--no!" he cried, throwing himself forward with a
violent start. "Who put such a monstrous thought into your head?"
Although the thought had frequently occurred to him, from her lips,
and now, it came to him with a powerful shock.
"You."
"I--I put such a thought into your head! Mrs. Davenport, you cannot
mean what you say? It is too dreadful!"
"I will not say you ever put the thought in as precise words as I
have used; but at our first meeting it was in your mind, and at our
first meeting it entered my mind that you considered it at all events
possible that I might be tried for the murder of my husband. You need
not be afraid of shocking me. Nothing can shock me now. What is the
important fact you are keeping back? I wish to know it at once."
"Mr. Blake has been arrested this evening. He was arrested as he left
the 'Wolfdog Inn.'"
"Is that all?"
"All! Why, it is a matter of life and death with him, as things now
look. He must have been mad to give the evidence he did to-day."
"And when am I to be arrested? Or perhaps I am already arrested, and
the driver is a policeman?"
"No, no. Nor is there, as far as I can see, a likelihood of anything
so horrible taking place."
"Neither the trial nor the scaffold would have the least horror for
me now, I shall be ready for my death when they are ready for it.
This is my place--for the present, at all events."
They had arrived in Jermyn Street, and she alighted.