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

brick paving between, and there is no sign of a bullet there,” Hewitt replied. “Push the sash as high as you please, the shot couldn’t have passed over the fence without hitting the window first. As to the bedroom windows, that’s impossible. Mr. Shanahan and his friends would not only have heard the shot, they would have seen it—which they didn’t.”

      “Then what’s the meaning of it?”

      “The meaning of it is simply this: either Rewse was shot somewhere else and his body brought here afterwards, or the article, whatever it was, that the bullet struck must have been taken away.”

      “Yes, of course. It’s just another piece of evidence destroyed by Main, that’s all. Every step we go we see the diabolical completeness of his plans. But now every piece of evidence missing only tells the more against him. The body alone condemns him past all redemption.”

      Hewitt was gazing about the room thoughtfully. “I think we’ll have Mrs. Hurley over here,” he said; “she should tell us if anything is missing. Constable, will you ask Mrs. Hurley to step over here?”

      Mrs. Hurley came at once and was brought into the sitting-room. “Just look about you, Mrs. Hurley,” Hewitt said, “in this room and everywhere else, and tell me if anything is missing that you can remember was here on the morning of the day you last saw Mr. Rewse.”

      She looked thoughtfully up and down the room. “Sure, sor,” she said, “‘tis all there as ord’nary.” Her eyes rested on the mantelpiece and she added at once, “Except the clock, indade.”

      “Except the clock?”

      “The clock ut is, sure. Ut stud on that same mantelpiece on that mornin’ as ut always did.”

      “What sort of clock was it?”

      “Just a plain round wan wid a metal case—an American clock they said ut was. But ut kept nigh as good time as me own.”

      “It did keep good time, you say?”

      “Faith an’ ut did, sor. Mine an’ this ran together for weeks wid nivir a minute betune thim.”

      “Thank you, Mrs. Hurley, thank you; that will do,” Hewitt exclaimed, with something of excitement in his voice. He turned to Mr. Bowyer. “We must find that clock,” he said. “And there’s the pistol; nothing has been seen of that. Come, help me search. Look for a loose board.”

      “But he’ll have taken them away with him, probably.”

      “The pistol perhaps—althought that isn’t likely. The clock, no. It’s evidence, man, evidence!” Hewitt darted outside and walked hurriedly round the cottage, looking this way and that about the country adjacent.

      Presently he returned. “No,” he said, “I think it’s more likely in the house.” He stood for a moment and thought. Then he made for the fireplace and flung the fender across the floor. All round the hearthstone an open crack extended. “See there!” he exclaimed as he pointed to it. He took the tongs, and with one leg levered the stone up till he could seize it in his fingers. Then he dragged it out and pushed it across the linoleum that covered the floor. In the space beneath lay a large revolver and a common American round nickel-plated clock. “See here!” he cried, “see here!” and he rose and placed the articles on the mantel-piece. The glass before the clock-face was smashed to atoms, and there was a gaping rent in the face itself. For a few seconds Hewitt regarded it as it stood, and then he turned to Mr. Bowyer. “Mr. Bowyer,” he said, “we have done Mr. Stanley Main a sad injustice. Poor young Rewse committed suicide. There is proof undeniable,” and he pointed to the clock.

      “Proof? How? Where? Nonsense, man. Pooh! Ridiculous! If Rewse committed suicide why should Main go to all that trouble and tell all those lies to prove that he died of small-pox? More even than that, what has he run away for?”

      “I’ll tell you, Mr. Bowyer, in a moment. But first as to this clock. Remember, Main set his watch by the Cullanin Town Hall clock, and Mrs. Hurley’s clock agreed exactly. That we have proved ourselves to-day by my own watch. Mrs. Hurley’s clock still agrees. This clock was always kept in time with Mrs. Hurley’s. Main returned at two exactly. Look at the time by that clock—the time when the bullet crashed into and stopped it.”

      The time was three minutes to one.

      Hewitt took the clock, unscrewed the winder and quickly stripped off the back, exposing the works. “See,” he said, “the bullet is lodged firmly among the wheels, and has been torn into snags and strips by the impact. The wheels themselves are ruined altogether. The central axle which carries the hands is bent. See there! Neither hand will move in the slightest. That bullet struck the axle and fixed those hands immovably at the moment of time when Algernon Rewse died. Look at the mainspring. It is less than half rim out. Proof that the clock was going when the shot struck it. Main left Rowse alive and well at half-past nine. He did not return till two—when Rewse had been dead more than an hour.”

      “But then, hang it all! How about the lies, and the false certificate, and the bolting?”

      “Let me tell you the whole tale, Mr. Bowyer, as I conjecture it to have been. Poor young Rewse was, as you told me, in a bad state of health—thoroughly run down, I think you said. You said something of his engagement and the death of the lady. This pointed clearly to a nervous—a mental upset. Very well. He broods, and so forth. He must go away and find change of scene and occupation. His intimate friend Main brings him here. The holiday has its good effect perhaps, at first, but after a while it gets monotonous, and brooding sets in again. I do not know whether or not you happen to know it, but it is a fact that four-fifths of all persons suffering from melancholia have suicidal tendencies. This may never have been suspected by Main, who otherwise might not have left him so long alone. At any rate he is left alone, and he takes the opportunity. He writes a note to Main and a long letter to his mother—an awful, heartbreaking letter, with a terrible picture of the mental agony wherein he was to die—perhaps with a tincture of religious mania in it, and prophesying merited hell for himself in the hereafter. This done, he simply stands up from this table, at which he has been writing, and with his back to the fire-place shoots himself. There he lies till Main returns an hour later. Main finds the door shut and nobody answers his knock. He goes round to the sitting-room window, looks through, and perhaps he sees the body.

      “Anyway he pushes back the catch with his knife, opens the window and gets in, and then he sees. He is completely knocked out of time. The thing is terrible. What shall he—what can he do? Poor Rewse’s mother and sister dote on him, and his mother is an invalid—heart disease. To let her see that awful letter would be to kill her. He burns the letter, also the note to himself. Then an idea strikes him. Even without the letter the news of her boy’s suicide will probably kill the poor old lady. Can she be prevented hearing of it? Of his death she must know—that’s inevitable. But as to the manner? Would it not be possible to concoct some kind lie? And then the opportunities of the situation occur to him. Nobody but himself knows of it. He is a medical man, fully qualified, and empowered to give certificates of death.

      “More, there is an epidemic of small-pox in the neighbourhood. What easier, with a little management, than to call the death one by small-pox? Nobody would be anxious to examine too closely the corpse of a smallpox patient. He decides that he will do it. He writes the letter to Mrs. Rewse announcing that her son has the disease, and he forbids Mrs. Hurley to come near the place for fear of infection. He cleans the floor—it is linoleum here, you see, and the stains were fresh—burns the clothes, cleans and stops the wound. At every turn his medical knowledge is of use. He puts the smashed clock and the pistol out of sight under the hearth. In a word he carries out the whole thing rather cleverly, and a terrible few days he must have passed. It never strikes him that he has dug a frightful pit for his own feet. You are suspicious, and you come across. In a perhaps rather peremptory manner You tell him how suspicious his conduct has been. And then a sense of his terrible position comes upon him like a thunderclap.