BRITISH MYSTERIES - Fergus Hume Collection: 21 Thriller Novels in One Volume. Fergus Hume

what hour did you get home?”

      “About two o’clock in the morning.”

      “Did you walk home?”

      “Yes—through the Fitzroy Gardens.”

      “Did you see anyone on your way home?”

      “I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention.”

      “Did anyone see you?”

      “Not that I know of.”

      “Then you refuse to tell me where you were between one and two o’clock on Friday morning?”

      “Absolutely!”

      Calton thought for a moment, to consider his next move.

      “Did you know that Whyte carried valuable papers about with him?”

      Fitzgerald hesitated, and turned pale.

      “No! I did not know,” he said, reluctantly.

      The lawyer made a master stroke.

      “Then why did you take them from him?”

      “What! Had he it with him?”

      Calton saw his advantage, and seized it at once.

      “Yes, he had it with him. Why did you take it?”

      “I did not take it. I didn’t even know he had it with him.”

      “Indeed! Will you kindly tell me what ‘it’ is.” Brian saw the trap into which he had fallen.

      “No! I will not,” he answered steadily.

      “Was it a jewel?”

      “No!”

      “Was it an important paper?”

      “I don’t know.”

      “Ah! It was a paper. I can see it in your face. And was that paper of importance to you?”

      “Why do you ask?”

      Calton fixed his keen grey eyes steadily on Brian’s face.

      “Because,” he answered slowly, “the man to whom that paper was of such value murdered Whyte.”

      Brian started up, ghastly pale.

      “My God!” he almost shrieked, stretching out his hands, “it is true after all,” and he fell down on the stone pavement in a dead faint.

      Calton, alarmed, summoned the gaoler, and between them they placed him on the bed, and dashed some cold water over his face. He recovered, and moaned feebly, while Calton, seeing that he was unfit to be spoken to, left the prison. When he got outside he stopped for a moment and looked back on the grim, grey walls.

      “Brian Fitzgerald,” he said to himself “you did not commit the murder yourself, but you know who did.”

Chapter XII.

       She Was a True Woman

       Table of Contents

      Melbourne society was greatly agitated over the hansom cab murder. Before the assassin had been discovered it had been looked upon merely as a common murder, and one of which society need take no cognisance beyond the bare fact of its committal. But now that one of the most fashionable young men in Melbourne had been arrested as the assassin, it bade fair to assume gigantic proportions. Mrs. Grundy was shocked, and openly talked about having nourished in her bosom a viper which had unexpectedly turned and stung her.

      Morn, noon, and night, in Toorak drawing-rooms and Melbourne Clubs, the case formed the principal subject of conversation. And Mrs. Grundy was horrified. Here was a young man, well born—“the Fitzgeralds, my dear, an Irish family, with royal blood in their veins”—well-bred—“most charming manners, I assure you, and so very good-looking” and engaged to one of the richest girls in Melbourne—“pretty enough, madam, no doubt, but he wanted her money, sly dog;” and this young man, who had been petted by the ladies, voted a good fellow by the men, and was universally popular, both in drawing-room and club, had committed a vulgar murder—it was truly shocking. What was the world coming to, and what were gaols and lunatic asylums built for if men of young Fitzgerald’s calibre were not put in them, and kept from killing people? And then, of course, everybody asked everybody else who Whyte was, and why he had never been heard of before. All people who had met Mr. Whyte were worried to death with questions about him, and underwent a species of social martyrdom as to who he was, what he was like, why he was killed, and all the rest of the insane questions which some people will ask. It was talked about everywhere—in fashionable drawing-rooms at five o’clock tea, over thin bread and butter and souchong; at clubs, over brandies and sodas and cigarettes; by working men over their mid-day pint, and by their wives in the congenial atmosphere of the back yard over the wash-tub. The papers were full of paragraphs about the famous murder, and the society papers gave an interview with the prisoner by their special reporters, which had been composed by those gentlemen out of the floating rumours which they heard around, and their own fertile imaginations.

      As to the prisoner’s guilt, everyone was certain of it. The cabman Royston had sworn that Fitzgerald had got into the cab with Whyte, and when he got out Whyte was dead. There could be no stronger proof than that, and the general opinion was that the prisoner would put in no defence, but would throw himself on the mercy of the court. Even the church caught the contagion, and ministers—Anglican, Roman Catholic, and Presbyterian, together with the lesser lights of minor denominations—took the hansom cab murder as a text whereon to preach sermons on the profligacy of the age, and to point out that the only ark which could save men from the rising flood of infidelity and immorality was their own particular church. “Gad,” as Calton remarked, after hearing five or six ministers each claim their own church as the one special vessel of safety, “there seems to be a whole fleet of arks!”

      For Mr. Felix Rolleston, acquainted as he was with all concerned, the time was one of great and exceeding joy. He was ever to the fore in retailing to his friends, plus certain garnishments of his own, any fresh evidence that chanced to come to light. His endeavour was to render it the more piquant, if not dramatic. If you asked him for his definite opinion as to the innocence or guilt of the accused, Mr. Felix shook his head sagaciously, and gave you to understand that neither he, nor his dear friend Calton—he knew Calton to nod to—had yet been able to make up their minds about the matter.

      “Fact is, don’t you know,” observed Mr. Rolleston, wisely, “there’s more in this than meets the eye, and all that sort of thing—think ‘tective fellers wrong myself—don’t think Fitz killed Whyte; jolly well sure he didn’t.”

      This would be followed invariably by a query in chorus of “who killed him then?”

      “Aha,” Felix would retort, putting his head on one side, like a meditative sparrow; “‘tective fellers can’t find out; that’s the difficulty. Good mind to go on the prowl myself, by Jove.”

      “But do you know anything of the detective business?” some one would ask.

      “Oh, dear yes,” with an airy wave of his hand; “I’ve read Gaboreau, you know; awfully jolly life, ‘tectives.”

      Despite this evasion, Rolleston, in his heart of hearts, believed Fitzgerald guilty. But he was one of those persons, who having either tender hearts or obstinate natures—the latter is perhaps the more general—deem it incumbent upon them to come forward in championship of those in trouble. There are, doubtless, those who think that Nero was a pleasant young man, whose cruelties were but the resultant of an overflow of high spirits; and who regard Henry VIII. in the light of a henpecked husband unfortunate in the possession of six wives. These people delight in expressing their sympathy with great scoundrels of the Ned Kelly order. They view them as the embodiment of heroism, unsympathetically and disgracefully treated