The Lock and Key Library: Classic Mystery and Detective Stories: Old Time English
General
The Lock and Key Library: Classic Mystery and Detective Stories: Old Time English
Detective and mystery stories; Fiction; Ghost stories
What is there in a look, you will say? Perhaps nothing; or it may
be everything. To my unsuspecting, unenlightened perception,
Bourgonef's gaze was simply the melancholy and half-curious gaze
which such a man might be supposed to cast upon a young woman who
had been made the topic of an interesting discourse. But to my
mind, enlightened as to his character, and instructed as to his
peculiar feelings arising from his own story, the gaze was charged
with horror. It marked a victim. The whole succession of events
rose before me in vivid distinctness; the separate details of
suspicion gathered into unity.
Great as was Bourgonef's command over his features, he could not
conceal uneasiness as well as surprise at my appearance at the
table d'hote in Munich. I shook hands with him, putting on as
friendly a mask as I could, and replied to his question about my
sudden return by attributing it to unexpected intelligence received
at Salzburg.
"Nothing serious, I hope?"
"Well, I'm afraid it will prove very serious," I said. "But we
shall see. Meanwhile my visit to the Tyrol must be given up or
postponed."
"Do you remain here, then?"
"I don't know what my movements will be."
Thus I had prepared him for any reserve or strangeness in my
manner; and I had concealed from him the course of my movements;
for at whatever cost, I was resolved to follow him and bring him to
justice.
But how? Evidence I had none that could satisfy any one else,
however convincing it might be to my own mind. Nor did there seem
any evidence forthcoming from Grosshesslohe. Sophie's body had
been found in the afternoon lying as if asleep in one of the by-
paths of the wood. No marks of a struggle; no traces of the
murderer. Her affianced lover, who was at Augsburg, on hearing of
her fate, hurried to Grosshesslohe, but could throw no light on the
murder, could give no hint as to a possible motive for the deed.
But this entire absence of evidence, or even ground of suspicion,
only made MY case the stronger. It was the motiveless malignity of
the deed which fastened it on Bourgonef; or rather, it was the
absence of any known motive elsewhere which assured me that I had
detected the motive in him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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