The Complete Works of Arthur Morrison (Illustrated). Arthur Morrison

me from doing what I had hinted at. He did so as soon as he could by every argument he could think of—entreated me in fact almost desperately.

      “That decided me. I said that after what he had said, and particularly in view of his whole manner and bearing, I should insist, by every means in my power, on having the body properly examined, and I went off at once to Cullanin to set the telegraph going, and see whatever local authority might be proper. When I returned in the afternoon Stanley Main had packed his bag and vanished, and I have not heard nor seen anything of him since. I stayed in the neighbourhood that day and the next, and left for London in the evening. By the help of my solicitors proper representations were made at the Home Office, and, especially in view of Main’s flight, a prompt order was made for exhumation and medical examination preliminary to an inquest. I am expecting to hear that the disinterment has been effected to-day. What I want you to do of course is chiefly to find Main. The Irish constabulary in that district are fine big men, and no doubt most excellent in quelling a faction fight or shutting up a shebeen, but I doubt their efficiency in anything requiring much more finesse. Perhaps also you may be able to find out something of the means by which the murder—it is plain it is one—was committed. It is quite possible that Main may have adopted some means to give the body the appearance, even to a medical man, of death from small-pox.”

      “That,” Hewitt said, “is scarcely likely, else, indeed, why did he not take care that another doctor should see the body before the burial? That would have secured him. But that is not a thing one can deceive a doctor over. Of course in the circumstances exhumation is desirable, but if the case is one of smallpox, I don’t envy the medical man who is to examine. At any rate the business is, I should imagine, not likely to be a very long one, and I can take it in hand at once. I will leave to-night for Ireland by the 6.30 train from Euston.”

      “Very good. I shall go over myself, of course. If anything comes to my knowledge in the meanwhile, of course I’ll let you know.”

      An hour or two after this a cab stopped at the door, and a young lady dressed in black sent in her name and a minute later was shown into Hewitt’s room. It was Miss Mary Rewse. She wore a heavy veil, and all she said she uttered in evidently deep distress of mind. Hewitt did what he could to calm her, and waited patiently.

      At length she said: “I felt that I must come to you, Mr. Hewitt, and yet now that I am here I don’t know what to say. Is it the fact that Mr. Bowyer has commissioned you to investigate the circumstances of my poor brother’s death, and to discover the whereabouts of Mr. Main?”

      “Yes, Miss Rewse, that is the fact. Can you tell me anything that will help me?”

      “No, no, Mr. Hewitt, I fear not. But it is such a dreadful thing, and Mr. Bowyer is—I’m afraid he is so much prejudiced against Mr. Main that I felt I ought to do something—to say something at least to prevent you entering on the case with your mind made up that he has been guilty of such an awful thing. He is really quite incapable of it, I assure you.”

      “Pray, Miss Rewse,” Hewitt replied, “don’t allow that apprehension to disturb you. If Mr. Main is, as you say, incapable of such an act as perhaps he is suspected of, you may rest assured no harm will come to him. So far as I am concerned at any rate I enter the case with a perfectly open mind. A man in my profession who accepted prejudices at the beginning of a case would have very poor results to show indeed. As yet I have no opinion, no theory, no prejudice—nothing indeed but a bare outline of fads. I shall derive no opinion and no theory from anything but a consideration of the actual circumstances and evidences on the spot. I quite understand the relation in which Mr. Main stands in regard to yourself and your family Have you heard from him lately?”

      “Not since the letter informing us of my brother’s death.”

      “Before then?”

      Miss Rewse hesitated.

      “Yes,” she said, “we corresponded. But—but there was really nothing—the letters were of a personal and private sort—they were—”

      “Yes, yes, of course,” Hewitt answered, with his eyes fixed keenly on the veil which Miss Rewse still kept down. “Of course I understand that. Then there is nothing else you can tell me?”

      “No, I fear not. I can only implore you to remember that no matter what you may see and hear, no matter what the evidence may be, I am sure, sure, sure that poor Stanley could never do such a thing.” And Miss Rewse buried her face in her hands.

      Hewitt kept his eyes on the lady, though he smiled slightly, and asked, “How long have you known Mr. Main?”

      “For some five or six years now. My poor brother knew him at school, though of course they were in different forms, Mr. Main being the elder.”

      “Were they always on good terms?”

      “They were always like brothers.”

      Little more was said. Hewitt condoled with Miss Rewse as well as he might, and she presently took her departure. Even as she descended the stairs a messenger came with a short note from Mr. Bowyer enclosing a telegram just received from Cullanin. The telegram ran thus:—

      BODY EXHUMED. DEATH FROM SHOT-WOUND. NO TRACE OF SMALL-POX. NOTHING YET HEARD OF MAIN. HAVE COMMUNICATED WITH CORONER.—O’REILLY.

      II.

      Hewitt and Mr. Bowyer travelled towards Mayo together, Mr. Bowyer restless and loquacious on the subject of the business in hand, and Hewitt rather bored thereby. He resolutely declined to offer an opinion on any single detail of the case till he had examined the available evidence, and his occasional remarks on matters of general interest, the scenery and so forth, struck his companion, unused to business of the sort which had occasioned the journey, as strangely cold-blooded and indifferent. Telegrams had been sent ordering that no disarrangement of the contents of the cottage was to be allowed pending their arrival, and Hewitt well knew that nothing more was practicable till the site was reached. At Ballymaine, where the train was left at last, they stayed for the night, and left early the next morning for Cullanin, where a meeting with Dr. O’Reilly at the mortuary had been appointed. There the body lay stripped of its shroud, calm and gray, and beginning to grow ugly, with a scarcely noticeable breach in the flesh of the left breast.

      “The wound has been thoroughly cleansed, closed and stopped with a carbolic plug before interment,” Dr. O’Reilly said. He was a middle-aged, grizzled man, with a face whereon many recent sleepless nights had left their traces. “I have not thought it necessary to do anything in the way of dissection. The bullet is not present, it has passed clean through the body, between the ribs both back and front, piercing the heart on its way. The death must have been instantaneous.”

      Hewitt quickly examined the two wounds, back and front, as the doctor turned the body over, and then asked: “Perhaps, Dr. O’Reilly, you have had some experience of a gunshot wound before this?”

      The doctor smiled grimly. “I think so,” he answered, with just enough of brogue in his words to hint his nationality and no more. “I was an army surgeon for a good many years before I came to Cullanin, and saw service in Ashanti and in India.”

      “Come then,” Hewitt said, “you’re an expert. Would it have been possible for the shot to have been fired from behind?”

      “Oh, no. See! the bullet entering makes a wound of quite a different character from that of the bullet leaving.”

      “Have you any idea of the weapon used?”

      “A large revolver, I should think; perhaps of the regulation size; that is, I should judge the bullet to have been a conical one of about the size fitted to such a weapon—smaller than that from a rifle.”

      “Can you form an idea of from what distance the shot was fired?”

      Dr. O’Reilly shook his head. “The clothes