The Lost Lady of LoneSouthworth, Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte
General
The Lost Lady of Lone
Southworth, Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte
Fiction
But Rose stormed and wept, and utterly refused either to put on the hat
and shawl, or to enter the cab. Nor could any amount of pursuasion or
threats move her obstinacy until she found that the officers of the law
were about to take her by force, and without her proper out-door dress.
Then, indeed, she yielded to the coaxing of her housekeeper, and allowed
the old woman to prepare her for her compulsory drive.
When she was ready, Inspector Pryor would have escorted her down stairs,
but she shook off his hand with angry scorn, and with an expletive that
made even his case-hardened ears burn and tingle again.
"If I maun gae, I will gae; but I willna hae your filthy hand on me, ye
beastly de'il!" she added, as she reached the cab. She paused an instant,
with her foot upon the step, and looked up and down the street, as if
she contemplated for a moment a flight for liberty and life; but probably
she did not like the prospect of the hue and cry, the pursuit and
recapture sure to ensue, for the next instant she stepped into the cab.
That night Rose Cameron passed in the Police Station-House of the
Westminster precinct. She had slept in much less comfortable, if more
respectable quarters, when she lived in the Highland hut at the foot of
Ben Lone.
The officers who had her in charge overlooked all her viciousness in
consideration of her youth and beauty, and afforded her every indulgence
which their own duty and her safe-keeping permitted. They gave her a cell
and a clean cot to herself; and one of them, to whom she gave a
sovereign, went out at her orders and bought for her a luxurious and
abundant supper.
And Rose--a perfect animal, as I beg leave to remind you--ate heartily
and slept soundly, notwithstanding her perils and terrors.
The next morning Rose Cameron was taken before the sitting magistrate of
the Police Court at Vincent Square.
The two witnesses from Lone, McNeil, the saddler, who had seen her
lurking under the window of the castle at midnight on the night of the
murder; and Ferguson, the railway clerk, who had sold her the ticket for
the twelve-fifteen express to London, had been summoned by telegraph on
the day before, had come up by the night train, and were now in court
ready to identify the prisoner. Sir Lemuel Levison's house-steward, also
summoned by telegraph, was there to identify the stolen jewels which were
produced in court. The examination was brief and conclusive. McNeil and
Ferguson swore to the woman as being Rose Cameron, and also as being the
very woman they had each seen on the night of the murder, under the
suspicious circumstances already mentioned.
And McRath swore to the watch and chain, the jewelled snuff-box, and the
solitaire diamond ring as the property of his deceased master, worn upon
his person on the same night of the murder.
The three policemen swore to finding the stolen property in the
possession of the prisoner.
Rose Cameron was incapable of inventing a plausible defence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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