ARRESTED.
The coroner repeated his question:
"Why did you tell the deceased to join you at the cathedral, Mr.
Dunbar?"
"Merely because it suited my humour at the time to do so," answered the
Anglo-Indian, coolly. "We had been very friendly together, and I had a
fancy for going over the cathedral. I thought that Wilmot might return
from the Ferns in time to go over some portion of the edifice with me.
He was a very intelligent fellow, and I liked his society."
"But the journey to the Ferns and back would have occupied some time."
"Perhaps so," answered Mr. Dunbar; "I did not know the distance to the
Ferns, and I did not make any calculation as to time. I merely said to
the deceased, 'I shall go back and look at the cathedral; and I will
wait for you there.' I said this, and I told him to be as quick as he
could."
"That was all that passed between you?"
"It was. I then returned to the cathedral."
"And you waited there for the deceased?"
"I did. I waited until close upon the hour at which I had ordered
dinner at the George."
There was a pause, during which the coroner looked very thoughtful.
"I am compelled to ask you one more question, Mr. Dunbar," he said,
presently, hesitating a little as he spoke.
"I am ready to answer any questions you may wish to ask," Mr. Dunbar
replied, very quietly.
"Were you upon friendly terms with the deceased?"
"I have just told you so. We were on excellent terms. I found him an
agreeable companion. His manners were those of a gentleman. I don't
know how he had picked up his education, but he certainly had contrived
to educate himself some how or other."
"I understand you were friendly together at the time of his death; but
prior to that time——"
Mr. Dunbar smiled.
"I have been in India five-and-thirty years," he said.
"Precisely. But before your departure for India, had you any
misunderstanding, any serious quarrel with the deceased?"
Mr. Dunbar's face flushed suddenly, and his brows contracted as if even
his self-possession were not proof against the unpleasant memories of
the past.
"No," he said, with determination; "I never quarrelled with him."
"There had been no cause of quarrel between you?"
"I don't understand your question. I have told you that I never
quarrelled with him."
"Perhaps not; but there might have been some hidden animosity, some
smothered feeling, stronger than any openly-expressed anger, hidden in
your breast. Was there any such feeling?"
"Not on my part."
"Was there any such feeling on the part of the deceased?"
Mr. Dunbar looked furtively at William Balderby. The junior partner's
eyelids dropped under that stolen glance.
It was clear that he knew the story of the forged bills.
Had the coroner for Winchester been a clever man, he would have
followed that glance of Mr. Dunbar's, and would have understood that
the junior partner knew something about the antecedents of the dead
man. But the coroner was not a very close observer, and Mr. Dunbar's
eager glance escaped him altogether.
"Yes," answered the Anglo-Indian, "Joseph Wilmot had a grudge against
me before I sailed for Calcutta, but we settled all that at
Southampton, and I promised to allow him an annuity."
"You promised him an annuity?"
"Yes—not a very large one—only fifty pounds a year; but he was quite
satisfied with that promise."
"He had some claim upon you, then?"
"No, he had no claim whatever upon me," replied Mr. Dunbar, haughtily.
Of course, it could be scarcely pleasant for a millionaire to be
cross-questioned in this manner by an impertinent Hampshire coroner.
The jurymen sympathized with the banker.
The coroner looked rather puzzled.
"If the deceased had no claim upon you, why did you promise him an
annuity?" he asked, after a pause.
"I made that promise for the sake of 'auld lang syne,'" answered Mr.
Dunbar. "Joseph Wilmot was a favourite servant of mine five-and-thirty
years ago. We were young men together. I believe that he had, at one
time, a very sincere affection for me. I know that I always liked him."
"How long were you in the grove with the deceased?"
"Not more than ten minutes."
"And you cannot describe the spot where you left him?"
"Not very easily; I could point it out, perhaps, if I were taken
there."
"What time elapsed between your leaving the cathedral yard with the
deceased and your returning to it without him?"
"Perhaps half an hour."
"Not longer?"
"No; I do not imagine that it can have been longer."
"Thank you, Mr. Dunbar; that will do for the present," said the
coroner.
The banker returned to his seat.
Arthur Lovell, still watching him, saw that his strong white hand
trembled a little as his fingers trifled with those glittering toys
hanging to his watch-chain.
The verger was the next person examined.
He described how he had been loitering in the yard of the cathedral as
the two men passed across it. He told how they had gone by arm-in-arm,
laughing and talking together.
"Which of them was talking as they passed you?" asked the coroner.
"Mr. Dunbar."
"Could you hear what he was saying?"
"No, sir. I could hear his voice, but I couldn't hear the words."
"What time elapsed between Mr. Dunbar and the deceased leaving the
cathedral yard, and Mr. Dunbar returning alone?"
The verger scratched his head, and looked doubtfully at Henry Dunbar.
That gentleman was looking straight before him, and seemed quite
unconscious of the verger's glance.
"I can't quite exactly say how long it was, sir," the old man answered,
after a pause.
"Why can't you say exactly?"
"Because, you see, sir, I didn't keep no particular 'count of the time,
and I shouldn't like to tell a falsehood."
"You must not tell a falsehood. We want the truth, and nothing but the
truth."
"I know, sir; but you see I am an old man, and my memory is not as good
as it used to be. I _think_ Mr. Dunbar was away an hour."
Arthur Lovell gave an involuntary start. Every one of the jurymen
looked suddenly at Mr. Dunbar.
But the Anglo-Indian did not flinch. He was looking at the verger now
with a quiet steady gaze, which seemed that of a man who had nothing to
fear, and who was serene and undisturbed by reason of his innocence.
"We don't want to know what you _think_," the coroner said; "you must
tell us only what you are certain of."
"Then I'm not certain, sir."
"You are not certain that Mr. Dunbar was absent for an hour?"
"Not quite certain, sir."
"But very nearly certain. Is that so?"
"Yes, sir, I'm very nearly certain. You see, sir, when the two
gentlemen went through the yard, the cathedral clock was chiming the
quarter after four; I remember that. And when Mr. Dunbar came back, I
was just going away to my tea, and I seldom go to my tea until it's
gone five."
"But supposing it to have struck five when Mr. Dunbar returned, that
would only make it three quarters of an hour after the time at which he
went through the yard, supposing him to have gone through, as you say,
at the quarter past four."
The verger scratched his head again.
"I'd been loiterin' about yesterday afternoon, sir," he said; "and I
was a bit late thinkin' of my tea."
"And you believe, therefore, that Mr. Dunbar was absent for an hour?"
"Yes, sir; an hour—or more."
"An hour, or more?"
"Yes, sir."
"He was absent more than an hour; do you mean to say that?"
"It might have been more, sir. I didn't keep no particular 'count of
the time."
Arthur Lovell had taken out his pocket-book, and was making notes of
the verger's evidence.
The old man went on to describe his having shown Mr. Dunbar all over
the cathedral. He made no mention of that sudden faintness which had
seized upon the Anglo-Indian at the door of one of the chapels; but he
described the rich man's manner as having been affable in the extreme.
He told how Henry Dunbar had loitered at the door of the cathedral, and
afterwards lingered in the quadrangle, waiting for the coming of his
servant. He told all this with many encomiums upon the rich man's
pleasant manner.
The next, and perhaps the most important, witnesses were the two
labourers, Philip Murtock and Patrick Hennessy, who had found the body
of the murdered man.
Patrick Hennessy was sent out of the room while Murtock gave his
evidence; but the evidence of the two men tallied in every particular.
They were Irishmen, reapers, and were returning from a harvest supper
at a farm five miles from St. Cross, upon the previous evening. One of
them had knelt down upon the edge of the stream to get a drink of water
in the crown of his felt hat, and had been horrified by seeing the face
of the dead man looking up at him in the moonlight, through the shallow
water that barely covered it. The two men had dragged the body out of
the streamlet, and Philip Murtock had watched beside it while Patrick
Hennessy had gone to seek assistance.
The dead man's clothes had been stripped from him, with the exception
of his trousers and boots, and the other part of his body was bare.
There was a revolting brutality in this fact. It seemed that the
murderer had stripped his victim for the sake of the clothes which he
had worn. There could be little doubt, therefore, that the murder had
been committed for the greed of gain, and not from any motive of
revenge.
Arthur Lovell breathed more freely; until this moment his mind had been
racked in agonizing doubts. Dark suspicions had been working in his
breast. He had been tortured by the idea that the Anglo-Indian had
murdered his old servant, in order to remove out of his way the chief
witness of the crime of his youth.
But if this had been so, the murderer would never have lingered upon
the scene of his crime in order to strip the clothes from his victim's
body.
No! the deed had doubtless been done by some savage wretch, some lost
and ignorant creature, hardened by a long life of crime, and preying
like a wild beast upon his fellow-men.
Such murders are done in the world. Blood has been shed for the sake of
some prize so small, so paltry, that it has been difficult for men to
believe that one human being could destroy another for such an object.
Heaven have pity upon the wretch so lost as to be separated from his
fellow-creatures by reason of the vileness of his nature! Heaven
strengthen the hands of those who seek to spread Christian
enlightenment and education through the land! for it is only those
blessings that will thin the crowded prison wards, and rob the gallows
of its victims.
The robbery of the dead man's clothes, and such property as he might
have had about him at the time of his death, gave a new aspect to the
murder in the eyes of Arthur Lovell. The case was clear and plain now,
and the young man's duty was no longer loathsome to him; for he no
longer suspected Henry Dunbar.
The constabulary had already been busy; the spot upon which the murder
had been committed, and the neighbourhood of that spot, had been
diligently searched. But no vestige of the dead man's garments had been
found.
The medical man's evidence was very brief. He stated, that when he
arrived at the Foresters' Arms he found the deceased quite dead, and
that he appeared to have been dead some hours; that from the bruises
and marks on the throat and neck, some contusions on the back of the
head, and other appearances on the body, which witness minutely
described, he said there were indications of a struggle having taken
place between deceased and some other person or persons; that the man
had been thrown, or had fallen down violently; and that death had
ultimately been caused by strangling and suffocation.
The coroner questioned the surgeon very closely as to how long he
thought the murdered man had been dead. The medical man declined to
give any positive statement on this point; he could only say that when
he was called in, the body was cold, and that the deceased might have
been dead three hours—or he might have been dead five hours. It was
impossible to form an opinion with regard to the exact time at which
death had taken place.
The evidence of the waiter and the landlord of the George only went to
show that the two men had arrived at the hotel together; that they had
appeared in very high spirits, and on excellent terms with each other;
that Mr. Dunbar had shown very great concern and anxiety about the
absence of his companion, and had declined to eat his dinner until nine
o'clock.
This closed the evidence; and the jury retired.
They were absent about a quarter of an hour, and then returned a
verdict of wilful murder against some person or persons unknown.
Henry Dunbar, Arthur Lovell, and Mr. Balderby went back to the hotel.
It was past six o'clock when the coroner's inquest was concluded, and
the three men sat down to dinner together at seven.
That dinner-party was not a pleasant one; there was a feeling of
oppression upon the minds of the three men. The awful event of the
previous day cast its dreadful shadow upon them. They could not talk
freely of this subject—for it was too ghastly a theme for
discussion—and to talk of any other seemed almost impossible.
Arthur Lovell had observed with surprise that Henry Dunbar had not once
spoken of his daughter. And yet this was scarcely strange; the
utterance of that name might have jarred upon the father's feelings at
such a time as this.
"You will write to Miss Dunbar to-night, will you not, sir?" the young
man said at last. "I fear that she will have been very anxious about
you all this day. She was alarmed by your message to Mr. Balderby."
"I shall not write," said the banker; "for I hope to see my daughter
to-night."
"You will leave Winchester this evening, then?"
"Yes, by the 10.15 express. I should have travelled by that train
yesterday evening, but for this terrible event."
Arthur Lovell looked rather astonished at this.
"You are surprised," said Mr. Dunbar.
"I thought perhaps that you might stay—until——"
"Until what?" asked the Anglo-Indian; "everything is finished, is it
not? The inquest was concluded to-day. I shall leave full directions
for the burial of this poor fellow, and an ample sum for his funeral
expenses. I spoke to the coroner upon that subject this afternoon. What
more can I do?"
"Nothing, certainly," answered Arthur Lovell, with rather a hesitating
manner; "but I thought, under the peculiar circumstances, it might be
better that you should remain upon the spot, if possible, until some
steps shall have been taken for the finding of the murderer."
He did not like to give utterance to the thought that was in his mind;
for he was thinking that some people would perhaps suspect Mr. Dunbar
himself, and that it might be well for him to remain upon the scene of
the murder until that suspicion should be done away with by the arrest
of the real murderer.
The banker shook his head.
"I very much doubt the discovery of the guilty man," he said; "what is
there to hinder his escape?"
"Everything," answered Arthur Lovell, warmly. "First, the stupidity of
guilt, the blind besotted folly which so often betrays the murderer. It
is not the commission of a crime only that is horrible; think of the
hideous state of the criminal's mind _after_ the deed is done. And it
is at that time, immediately after the crime has been perpetrated, when
the breast of the murderer is like a raging hell; it is at that time
that he is called upon to be most circumspect—to keep guard upon his
every look, his smallest word, his most trivial action,—for he knows
that every look and action is watched; that every word is greedily
listened to by men who are eager to bring his guilt home to him; by
hungry men, wrestling for his conviction as a result that will bring
them a golden reward; by practised men, who have studied the philosophy
of crime, and who, by reason of their peculiar skill, are able to read
dark meanings in words and looks that to other people are like a
strange language. He knows that the scent of blood is in the air, and
that the bloodhounds are at their loathsome work. He knows this; and at
such a time he is called upon to face the world with a bold front, and
so to fashion his words and looks that he shall deceive the secret
watchers. He is never alone. The servant who waits upon him, or the
railway guard who shows him to his seat in the first-class carriage,
the porter who carries his luggage, or the sailor who looks at him
scrutinizingly as he breathes the fresh sea-air upon the deck of that
ship which is to carry him to a secure hiding-place—any one of these
may be a disguised detective, and at any moment the bolt may fall; he
may feel the light hand upon his shoulder, and know that he is a doomed
man. Who can wonder, then, that a criminal is generally a coward, and
that he betrays himself by some blind folly of his own?"
The young man had been carried away by his subject, and had spoken with
a strange energy.
Mr. Dunbar laughed aloud at the lawyer's enthusiasm.
"You should have been a barrister, Mr. Lovell," he said; "that would
have been a capital opening for your speech as counsel for the crown. I
can see the wretched criminal shivering in the dock, cowering under
that burst of forensic eloquence."
Henry Dunbar laughed heartily as he finished speaking, and then threw
himself back in his easy-chair, and passed his handkerchief across his
handsome forehead, as it was his habit to do occasionally.
"In this case I think the criminal will be most likely arrested,"
Arthur Lovell continued, still dwelling upon the subject of the murder;
"he will be traced by those clothes. He will endeavour to sell them, of
course; and as he is most likely some wretchedly ignorant boor, he will
very probably try to sell them within a few miles of the scene of the
crime."
"I hope he will be found," said Mr. Balderby, filling his glass with
claret as he spoke; "I never heard any good of this man Wilmot, and,
indeed, I believe he went to the bad altogether after you left England,
Mr. Dunbar."
"Indeed!"
"Yes," answered the junior partner, looking rather nervously at his
chief; "he committed forgery, I believe; fabricated forged bank notes,
or something of that kind, and was transported for life, I heard; but I
suppose he got a remission of his sentence, or something of that kind,
and returned to England."
"I had no idea of this," said Mr. Dunbar.
"He did not tell you, then?"
"Oh, no; it was scarcely likely that he should tell me."
Very little more was said upon the subject just then. At nine o'clock
Mr. Dunbar left the room to see to the packing of his things, at a
little before ten the three gentlemen drove away from the George Hotel,
on their way to the station.
They reached the station at five minutes past ten; the train was not
due until a quarter past.
Mr. Balderby went to the office to procure the three tickets. Henry
Dunbar and Arthur Lovell walked arm-in-arm up and down the platform.
As the bell for the up-train was ringing, a man came suddenly upon the
platform and looked about him.
He recognized the banker, walked straight up to him, and, taking off
his hat, addressed Mr. Dunbar respectfully.
"I am sorry to detain you, sir," he said; "but I have a warrant to
prevent you leaving Winchester."
"What do you mean?"
"I hold a warrant for your apprehension, sir."
"From whom?"
"From Sir Arden Westhorpe, our chief county magistrate; and I am to
take you before him immediately, sir."
"Upon what charge?" cried Arthur Lovell.
"Upon suspicion of having been concerned in the murder of Joseph
Wilmot."
The millionaire drew himself up haughtily, and looked at the constable
with a proud smile.
"This is too absurd," he said; "but I am quite ready to go with you. Be
good enough to telegraph to my daughter, Mr. Lovell," he added, turning
to the young man; "tell her that circumstances over which I have no
control will detain me in Winchester for a week. Take care not to alarm
her."
Everybody about the station had collected on the platform, and made a
circle about Mr. Dunbar. They stood a little aloof from him, looking at
him with respectful interest: altogether different from the eager
clamorous curiosity with which they would have regarded any ordinary
man suspected of the same crime.
He was suspected; but he could not be guilty. Why should a millionaire
commit a murder? The motives that might influence other men could have
had no weight with him.
The bystanders repeated this to one another, as they followed Mr.
Dunbar and his custodian from the station, loudly indignant against the
minions of the law.
Mr. Dunbar, the constable, and Mr. Balderby drove straight to the
magistrate's house.
The junior partner offered any amount of bail for his chief; but the
Anglo-Indian motioned him to silence, with a haughty gesture.
"I thank you, Mr. Balderby," he said, proudly; "but I will not accept
my liberty on sufferance. Sir Arden Westhorpe has chosen to arrest me,
and I shall abide the issue of that arrest."
It was in vain that the junior partner protested against this. Henry
Dunbar was inflexible.
"I hope, and I venture to believe, that you are as innocent as I am
myself of this horrible crime, Mr. Dunbar," the baronet said, kindly;
"and I sympathize with you in this very terrible position. But upon the
information laid before me, I consider it my duty to detain you until
the matter shall have been further investigated. You were the last
person seen with the deceased."
"And for that reason it is supposed that I strangled my old servant for
the sake of his clothes," cried Mr. Dunbar, bitterly. "I am a stranger
in England; but if that is your English law, I am not sorry that the
best part of my life has been passed in India. However, I am perfectly
willing to submit to any examination that may be considered necessary
to the furtherance of justice."
So, upon the second night of his arrival in England, Henry Dunbar,
chief of the wealthy house of Dunbar, Dunbar, and Balderby, slept in
Winchester gaol.