The Impending Sword: A Novel (Vol. 3 of 3)Yates, Edmund
General
The Impending Sword: A Novel (Vol. 3 of 3)
Yates, Edmund
Fiction
Thornton Carey, Mrs. Jenkins, and the woman, whose evidence Thornton
Carey had skilfully hunted up during his short stay in Liverpool,
exercising the ingenuity which subsequently won him many warm
congratulations from Mr. Dunn's travelling companion, and whose
evidence was the last link in the chain of identification which
convicted Mr. Dunn of the crime committed by Trenton Warren, had
reached the police-court some minutes in advance. The prisoner
recognised his inoffensive fellow lodgers of the dining-room floor in
Queen-street, Mayfair, with an irrepressible start, and spoke for the
first time. 'Who are they?' he asked.
Thornton Carey replied: 'I am Thornton Carey, whose benefactor Mr.
Griswold was; and this woman,' drawing forward Mrs. Jenkins, 'is your
brother's widow--your brother whose blood is on your head. We
represent your victims!'
The usual formalities were quickly accomplished; and when the prisoner
was searched, it appeared that he would have done wisely had he
yielded to that momentary temptation which had moved him to tear the
letters which he had read in the train and to scatter them in
fragments from the carriage window; for the letters in question were
those written by Helen Griswold to her husband, and the photograph was
that which the murdered man had carried in his pocket-book, and the
murderer had robbed him of both.
'On the whole,' as Mr. Dunn's travelling companion remarked to
Thornton Carey, as they walked away from the police-court together,
'it isn't often one has the handling of a case that fits together so
satisfactorily; in this there isn't a loop-hole.'
EPILOGUE
During the weeks, now numbering months, of their intimate association,
a strong mutual regard had sprung up between Thornton Carey and Mrs.
Jenkins. The bereaved woman's character had a great attraction for
Thornton, who thoroughly appreciated her sincerity, disinterestedness,
and depth of feeling. The earnestness and vehemence of Mrs. Jenkins's
grief for the loss of a husband who perhaps had not precisely merited
her love or her sorrow had struck the young man by its pure
womanliness, and her sound practical common sense had been of immense
assistance to him in every detail of his task. Thus the relation
between the two confederates, which, owing to the discrepancy between
their respective social stations, might have been attended by a
certain awkwardness and reserve, had, on the contrary, been frank and
pleasant from the first, and had very soon merged into genuine
unreserved confidence and intimacy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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