"Love is blind," said Michael Wimble, with a piteous sigh. "Yes, love
is blind."
He had been a great many times past Mrs Sarson's cottage, always with a
stern determination in his breast to treat her with distance and
resentment, as one who shunned him for the sake of her lodger; but so
surely as he caught a glimpse of the pleasant lady at door or window,
his heart softened, and he knew that if she would only turn to him,
there was forgiveness for her and more.
Upon the morning in question he had had his constitutional, and found a
splendid specimen of an auk washed up, quite fresh, which he meant to
stuff and add to his museum.
An hour later a neat little servant-maid came to the door with a parcel
and a letter.
"With missus's compliments."
Wimble took the letter and parcel, his hands trembling and a mist coming
before his eyes, for it was Mrs Sarson's little maid.
"We are all wrong," he said, as he hurried in, his heart beating
complete forgiveness, happiness in store, and everything exactly as he
wished.
He turned back to the door, slipped the bolt, and then seated himself at
the table with his back to the window, and cut the string of the parcel
with a razor.
"She has relented, and it is a present," he said to himself, as he
tingled with pleasure; "a present and a letter."
He stopped, with his fingers twitching nervously and his eyes going from
parcel to note and back again.
Which should he open first--note or parcel?
He took the parcel, unfastened the paper, and found a neat cardboard
box; and he had only to take off the lid to see its contents, but he
held himself back from the fulfilment of his delight by taking up the
note, opening it, and reading--
"Mrs Sarson would be greatly obliged by Mr Wimble's attention to the
enclosed at once. To be returned within a week."
"Attention--returned--a week!" faltered Wimble; and with a sudden snatch
he raised the lid, and sat staring dismally at its contents.
"And me to have seen her all these times and not to know that," he
groaned, as he rested his elbows on the table and his brow upon his
hands, gazing the while dismally into the box. "Ah! false one--false as
false can be. Why, I've gazed at her fondly hundreds o' times, but love
is blind, and--yes," he muttered, as he took the object from the box and
rested it upon his closed fist in the position it would have occupied
when in use, "there is some excuse. As good a skin parting as I ever
saw. One of Ribton's, I suppose."
There was a long and dismal silence as Michael Wimble, feeling that he
was thoroughly disillusioned, slowly replaced the object in its box.
"How can a woman be so deceitful, and all for the sake of show? And me
never to know that she wore a front!"
"All, well!" he sighed, "I can't touch it to-day," and rising slowly he
replaced it in the box, dropped the note within, roughly secured the
packet, and opened a drawer at the side.
As he pulled the drawer sharply out, something rolled from front to
back, and then, as the drawer was out to its full extent, rolled down to
the front.
He picked it out, dropped the cardboard box within, and shut it up,
ignoring the bottle he held in his hand as he walked away to slip the
bolt back and throw open the door.
He was just in time to receive a customer in the shape of Doctor Asher,
who entered and nodded.
"I want you, Wimble," he said. "When can you come up? Beginning to
show a little grey about the roots, am I not?"
"Yes, sir, decidedly," said Wimble, as the doctor took off his hat, and
displayed his well-kept dark hair.
"When will you come, then?"
"When you like, sir," said Wimble, unconsciously rubbing the tip of his
nose with the cork of the little bottle he held in his hand.
"To-morrow afternoon, then," said the doctor sharply; "and you needn't
shake the hair dye in my face."
"Beg pardon, sir? Oh, I see! That's not hair dye, sir."
"What is it, then? New dodge for bringing hair on bald places?"
He held out his hand for the bottle, and the barber passed it at once.
"Oh, no, sir," he said, "nothing of that kind."
With the action born of long habit, the doctor took out the cork,
sniffed, held the bottle up to the light, shook it, applied a finger to
the neck, shook the bottle again, tasted the drug at the end of his
finger, and quickly spat it out.
"Why, Wimble, what the dickens are you doing with chloral?"
"Nothing, sir, nothing; only an old bottle."
"Throw it away, then," said the doctor hastily. "Don't take it. Very
bad habit. Recollect that's how poor Mr Gartram came to his end.
Good-day. Come round, then, at three."
"Yes, sir, certainly, sir; but you forgot to--"
"Oh, I beg pardon. Yes, of course," said the doctor, handing back the
bottle, and then, beating himself with his right-hand glove, he walked
hastily out of the place.
Wimble stood looking after his visitor till he was out of sight, and
then walked slowly back into his museum to operate upon the dead bird,
which lay where he had placed it upon a shelf ready for skinning.
"Ah," he said mournfully, as he rubbed his nose slowly with the cork of
the little bottle, "what a world of deception it is. There is nothing
honest. Were all more or less like specimens. A front, and me not to
have known it all this time. If she had taken me sooner into her
confidence, I wouldn't have cared. The doctor did. Hah! I wonder who
ever suspected him, with his clear dark locks, as I keep so right. Yes,
he's a deceiver, and without me what would he look like in a couple of
months?--Deceit, deceit, deceit.--And I trusted her so. It's taking a
mean advantage of a man.
"Well, it was a mark of confidence, and perhaps I have been all wrong.
It shows she is waiting to trust me, and ought I to? Well, we shall
see."
Michael Wimble looked a little brighter, and then his eyes fell upon the
bottle, which he shook as the doctor had shaken it, took out the cork,
applied a finger to it, and tasted in the same way, quickly spitting it
out as he became aware of the sharp taste.
"What did he say: chloral? Don't take any of it. No, I sha'n't do
that."
Wimble suddenly became thoughtful and dreamy as he replaced the cork,
and he seemed to see the bright ray of light once more on the dry patch
of sand beyond where the tide had reached.
Then he thought about Gartram's death by chloral.
"Might have been the same bottle," he said thoughtfully; "took what he
wanted, and then threw it out of the window."
He looked at the tiny drop in the bottom, turned it over and over, and
his thoughts seemed to run riot in his brain, till he grew confused at
their number. But after a time he followed the one theme again.
"What a piece of evidence to have brought up at the inquest. How
important a witness I should have been. But why should he have thrown
the bottle out of the window? He didn't poison himself. He wasn't the
man to do that. Thousands upon thousands of money. Everything he could
wish for. Regular king of the place. He wouldn't do that--he
couldn't."
Wimble stood with his brow wrinkled up, and then all at once, as if
startled by the suddenness of a thought, he dropped the bottle on the
oilcloth and drew back, gazing at it in a horrified way, his eyes
dilating, and the white showing all round.
"Somebody must have given it to him."
"No, no. They wouldn't do that; it would be murder. No one would try
to murder him."
He passed his hand over his forehead, and drew it away quite wet.
"His money!" he half whispered, as the thought seemed to grow and grow.
"They say he kept thousands up there. Or some one who hated him, as
lots of people did."
Wimble dropped into his shaving chair, and sat thinking of the numbers
of workpeople who had quarrelled with Gartram and spoken threateningly;
but he did not feel that it was possible for any one of these to have
done such a deed.
"Some one who hated him--some one who wanted to get rid of him--some one
who, who--no, no, no, it's too horrible to think about. I wouldn't know
if I could."
He lifted the little bottle between his finger and thumb, and drew back
with his arm extended to the utmost to hurl the little vessel across the
road, and right out toward the sea.
But he checked himself thoughtfully, drew back, and went across his shop
to the side. Here he stood, bottle in hand, thinking deeply, before
slowly opening the drawer and placing it in a corner.
"It would be very valuable," he said softly, "if that was the bottle
some one used to poison the old man; and if it was, why, I haven't got a
specimen in my museum that would attract people half so much. `The
Danmouth murder; the bottle that held the poison,' Why, they'd come in
hundreds to see it."
He took the phial out again, for it seemed to have a strange fascination
for him, and after staring at it till his hands grew moist, he took out
a piece of white paper, carefully rolled it therein, and placed it in
another drawer, which he had to unlock, and fastened afterwards with the
greatest care.
"That bottle's worth at least a hundred pound," he said huskily, as he
put the key in his pocket. "It will be quite a little fortune to me.
"Somebody who hated him--somebody who wanted him out of the way," he
said, as he tapped his teeth with the key. "No, I can't think, and
won't try any more. I'm not a detective, and I don't want to know.
"Some one who hated him and had quarrelled with him, and who wanted him
out of the way."
In spite of his determination not to think any more of the subject, it
came back persistently, and at last, to clear his brain and drive away
the thoughts, he took down his hat, and determined to let the museum
take care of itself for an hour, while he walked down along the beach.
He knew, as he came to this determination, that he would go straight
down beneath the Fort, and look at the spot where he found the bottle;
but, all the same, he felt that he must go, and, putting on his hat, he
took the key out from inside of the door, and standing just inside the
shop, began to put the key into the outer portion of the lock, as the
thought came again more strongly than ever--
"Some one who hated him and had quarrelled with him, and wanted him out
of the way."
He was in the act of closing his door as a quick step came along the
path, and as the door closed, a voice said to some one--
"How do, Edward?" and the speaker passed on with creel on back and
salmon rod over his shoulder.
Wimble darted back into the museum, shut the door, and stood trembling
in the middle of the place.
"Oh!" he said, in a hoarse whisper, as the great drops stood out upon
his brow. "What did Brime say?"
He shivered, and his voice dropped into a whisper.
"Mr Chris Lisle! He was there that night!"
Volume Three, Chapter V.