‘No.’
‘Then I believe I can assure you that you are on a fruitless errand, and will not find what you fear to find. Will you come with us?’
A little winding through some muddy alleys that might have been deposited by the last ill-savoured tide, brought them to the wicket-gate and bright lamp of a Police Station; where they found the Night-Inspector, with a pen and ink, and ruler, posting up his books in a whitewashed office, as studiously as if he were in a monastery on top of a mountain, and no howling fury of a drunken woman were banging herself against a cell-door in the back-yard at his elbow. With the same air of a recluse much given to study, he desisted from his books to bestow a distrustful nod of recognition upon Gaffer, plainly importing, ‘Ah! we know all about you, and you’ll overdo it some day;’ and to inform Mr Mortimer Lightwood and friends, that he would attend them immediately. Then, he finished ruling the work he had in hand (it might have been illuminating a missal, he was so calm), in a very neat and methodical manner, showing not the slightest consciousness of the woman who was banging herself with increased violence, and shrieking most terrifically for some other woman’s liver.
‘A bull’s-eye,’ said the Night-Inspector, taking up his keys. Which a deferential satellite produced. ‘Now, gentlemen.’
With one of his keys, he opened a cool grot at the end of the yard, and they all went in. They quickly came out again, no one speaking but Eugene: who remarked to Mortimer, in a whisper, ‘Not much worse than Lady Tippins.’
So, back to the whitewashed library of the monastery – with that liver still in shrieking requisition, as it had been loudly, while they looked at the silent sight they came to see – and there through the merits of the case as summed up by the Abbot. No clue to how body came into river. Very often was no clue. Too late to know for certain, whether injuries received before or after death; one excellent surgical opinion said, before; other excellent surgical opinion said, after. Steward of ship in which gentleman came home passenger, had been round to view, and could swear to identity. Likewise could swear to clothes. And then, you see, you had the papers, too. How was it he had totally disappeared on leaving ship, ‘till found in river? Well! Probably had been upon some little game. Probably thought it a harmless game, wasn’t up to things, and it turned out a fatal game. Inquest to-morrow, and no doubt open verdict.
‘It appears to have knocked your friend over – knocked him completely off his legs,’ Mr Inspector remarked, when he had finished his summing up. ‘It has given him a bad turn to be sure!’ This was said in a very low voice, and with a searching look (not the first he had cast) at the stranger.
Mr Lightwood explained that it was no friend of his.
‘Indeed?’ said Mr Inspector, with an attentive ear; ‘where did you pick him up?’
Mr Lightwood explained further.
Mr Inspector had delivered his summing up, and had added these words, with his elbows leaning on his desk, and the fingers and thumb of his right hand, fitting themselves to the fingers and thumb of his left. Mr Inspector moved nothing but his eyes, as he now added, raising his voice:
‘Turned you faint, sir! Seems you’re not accustomed to this kind of work?’
The stranger, who was leaning against the chimneypiece with drooping head, looked round and answered, ‘No. It’s a horrible sight!’
‘You expected to identify, I am told, sir?’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you identified?’
‘No. It’s a horrible sight. O! a horrible, horrible sight!’
‘Who did you think it might have been?’ asked Mr Inspector. ‘Give us a description, sir. Perhaps we can help you.’
‘No, no,’ said the stranger; ‘it would be quite useless. Good-night.’
Mr Inspector had not moved, and had given no order; but, the satellite slipped his back against the wicket, and laid his left arm along the top of it, and with his right hand turned the bull’s-eye he had taken from his chief – in quite a casual manner – towards the stranger.
‘You missed a friend, you know; or you missed a foe, you know; or you wouldn’t have come here, you know. Well, then; ain’t it reasonable to ask, who was it?’ Thus, Mr Inspector.
‘You must excuse my telling you. No class of man can understand better than you, that families may not choose to publish their disagreements and misfortunes, except on the last necessity. I do not dispute that you discharge your duty in asking me the question; you will not dispute my right to withhold the answer. Good-night.’
Again he turned towards the wicket, where the satellite, with his eye upon his chief, remained a dumb statue.
‘At least,’ said Mr Inspector, ‘you will not object to leave me your card, sir?’
‘I should not object, if I had one; but I have not.’ He reddened and was much confused as he gave the answer.
‘At least,’ said Mr Inspector, with no change of voice or manner, ‘you will not object to write down your name and address?’
‘Not at all.’
Mr Inspector dipped a pen in his inkstand, and deftly laid it on a piece of paper close beside him; then resumed his former attitude. The stranger stepped up to the desk, and wrote in a rather tremulous hand – Mr Inspector taking sidelong note of every hair of his head when it was bent down for the purpose – ‘Mr Julius Handford, Exchequer Coffee House, Palace Yard, Westminster.’
‘Staying there, I presume, sir?’
‘Staying there.’
‘Consequently, from the country?’
‘Eh? Yes – from the country.’
‘Good-night, sir.’
The satellite removed his arm and opened the wicket, and Mr Julius Handford went out.
‘Reserve!’ said Mr Inspector. ‘Take care of this piece of paper, keep him in view without giving offence, ascertain that he is staying there, and find out anything you can about him.’
The satellite was gone; and Mr Inspector, becoming once again the quiet Abbot of that Monastery, dipped his pen in his ink and resumed his books. The two friends who had watched him, more amused by the professional manner than suspicious of Mr Julius Handford, inquired before taking their departure too whether he believed there was anything that really looked bad here?
The Abbot replied with reticence, couldn’t say. If a murder, anybody might have done it. Burglary or pocket-picking wanted ‘prenticeship. Not so, murder. We were all of us up to that. Had seen scores of people come to identify, and never saw one person struck in that particular way. Might, however, have been Stomach and not Mind. If so, rum stomach. But to be sure there were rum everythings. Pity there was not a word of truth in that superstition about bodies bleeding when touched by the hand of the right person; you never got a sign out of bodies. You got row enough out of such as her – she was good for all night now (referring here to the banging demands for the liver), ‘but you got nothing out of bodies if it was ever so.’
There being nothing more to be done until the Inquest was held next day, the friends went away together, and Gaffer Hexam and his son went their separate way. But, arriving at the last corner, Gaffer bade his boy go home while he turned into a red-curtained tavern, that stood dropsically bulging over the causeway, ‘for a half-a-pint.’
The boy lifted the latch he had lifted before, and found his sister again seated before the fire at her work. Who raised her head upon his coming in and asking:
‘Where did you go, Liz?’
‘I went out in the dark.’
‘There was no necessity for that. It was all right enough.’
‘One of the gentlemen, the one who didn’t speak while I was there, looked hard at me. And I was afraid he might know what