The Herapath PropertyFletcher, J. S. (Joseph Smith)
General
The Herapath Property
Fletcher, J. S. (Joseph Smith)
Detective and mystery stories
Selwood felt his cheeks flush and rose to conceal his sudden show of
feeling. "I'll go anywhere and do anything!" he answered quietly. "I
don't know whether my opinion's worth having, but I think exactly as
Professor Cox-Raythwaite does about this affair. But--who's the guilty
man? Is it--can it be Burchill? If what Barthorpe Herapath says about
that will affair is true, Burchill is cunning and subtle enough for----"
"Burchill, my dear lad, is at present out of our ken," interrupted
Cox-Raythwaite. "Barthorpe, however, is very much within it, and
Halfpenny must arrange for you two to see him without delay. And once
closeted with him, you must talk to him for his soul's good--get him to
search his memory, to think of every detail he can rake up--above
everything, if there's anything he's keeping back, beg him, on your
knees if necessary, to make a clean breast of it. Otherwise----"
Two days later Peggie, sick at heart, and Selwood, nervous and fidgety,
sat in a room which gave both of them a feeling as of partial suffocation.
It was not that it was not big enough for two people, or for six people,
or for a dozen people to sit in--there was space for twenty. What
oppressed them was the horrible sense of formality, the absence of
life, colour, of anything but sure and solid security, the intrusive
spick-and-spanness, the blatant cleanliness, the conscious odour of some
sort of soap, used presumably for washing floors and walls, the whole
crying atmosphere of incarceration. The barred window, the pictureless
walls, the official look of the utterly plain chairs and tables, the
grilles of iron bars which cut the place in half--these things oppressed
the girl so profoundly that she felt as if a sharp scream was the only
thing that would relieve her pent-up feelings. And as she sat there with
thumping heart, dreading the appearance of her cousin behind those bars,
yet wishing intensely that he would come, Peggie had a sudden fearful
realization of what it really meant to fall into the hands of justice.
There, somewhere close by, no doubt, Barthorpe was able to move hands
and feet, legs and arms, body and head--but within limits. He could pace
a cell, he could tramp round an exercise yard, he could eat and drink,
he could use his tongue when allowed, he could do many things--but
always within limits. He was held--held by an unseen power which could
materialize, could make itself very much seen, at a second's notice.
There he would stop until he was carried off to his trial; he would come
and go during that trial, the unseen power always holding him. And one
day he would either go out of the power's clutches--free, or he would be
carried off, not to this remand prison but a certain cell in another
place in which he would sit, or lounge, or lie, with nothing to do,
until a bustling, businesslike man came in one morning with a little
group of officials and in his hand a bundle of leather straps. Held!--by
the strong, never-relaxing clutch of the law.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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