Colonel Thorndyke's SecretHenty, G. A. (George Alfred)
General
Colonel Thorndyke's Secret
Henty, G. A. (George Alfred)
Detective and mystery stories; Hindus -- England -- Fiction; India -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
Mark, after requesting the Inspector to find a man to go over to
Streatham and bring back his horse, and writing an order to the ostler
to deliver it, walked across to his lodgings. Upon the whole, he was
not sorry that Bastow had taken the matter into his own hands; he had,
certainly, while engaged in the search, looked forward to seeing him in
the dock and witnessing his execution, but he now felt that enough had
been done for vengeance, and that it was as well that the matter had
ended as it had. He was wearied out with the excitement of the last
forty-eight hours. It was one o'clock when he awoke, and after dressing
and going into Covent Garden to lunch at one of the coffee houses, he
made his way up to Islington.
“Taking a day's holiday?” Millicent asked as he came in.
“Well, not exactly, Millicent; I have left school altogether.”
“Left school, Mark? Do you mean that you have decided that it is of no
use going on any longer?”
“I have given it up because I have finished it. Arthur Bastow was
captured last night, and committed suicide as he was being taken to the
station.”
An exclamation of surprise broke from Mrs. Cunningham and Millicent.
“It seems horrid to be glad that anyone has taken his own life,” the
latter said; “but I cannot help feeling so, for as long as he lived I
should never have considered that you were safe, and besides, I suppose
there is no doubt that if he had not killed himself he would have been
hung.”
“There is not a shadow of doubt about that,” Mark replied. “We found
the proceeds of a vast number of robberies at his place, and also in
his pockets the money he had taken from the passengers of the Portsmouth
coach an hour before we captured him. So that putting aside that
Australian business altogether, his doom was sealed.”
“Now, please, tell us all about it,” Mrs. Cunningham said. “But first
let us congratulate you most warmly not only on the success of your
search, but that the work is at an end.”
“Yes, I am glad it is over. At first I was very much interested; in
fact, I was intensely interested all along, and should have been for
however long it had continued. But, at the same time, I could do nothing
else, and one does not want to spend one's whole life as a detective.
At last it came about almost by chance, and the only thing I have to
congratulate myself upon is that my idea of the sort of place he would
have taken was exactly borne out by fact.”
And Mark then gave them a full account of the manner in which the
discovery had been made and the capture effected.
“You see, Millicent, I followed your injunction, and was very careful.
Taking him by surprise as I did, I might have managed it single handed,
but with the aid of two good men it made a certainty of it, and the
whole thing was comfortably arranged.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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