Detective and mystery stories; Embezzlement -- Fiction; England -- Fiction
Gilbert, too, had been closely scrutinizing the dead face, and he
thought that he recognized it. Looking at his father and seeing his
evident emotion, he felt certain.
"It is Morris Thornton!" said he, in a hoarse unnatural voice.
"Morris Thornton!" echoed Francis Eversleigh, and fell in a heap across
the body of his old friend.
CHAPTER XIII
"Morris Thornton!"
Both the porter and the locksmith had heard the name distinctly before
Eversleigh swooned away, and both understood who the dead man was. They
were so astounded that they stood looking at each other with startled
faces and mouths agape, while Gilbert bent over the unconscious form of
his father.
"Morris Thornton at last!" cried the porter; "it's the gentleman as was
missing."
"Morris Thornton--yes," said the locksmith; "the missing
millionaire--the man wot was advertised for in all the papers."
And then both men were silent, thinking of the reward of a thousand
pounds offered for information about this very man.
"I was the first as found him," remarked the locksmith, coming to his
wits, to the porter.
"We all found him together, didn't we?" asked the porter, in an
aggrieved tone.
Gilbert, meanwhile, had moved his father from off the dead body of
Morris Thornton on to the floor, and sought to bring him to by
unfastening his collar and tie and opening his shirt. The son felt that
his first concern was with his father, not with Morris Thornton--with
the living rather than the dead. And now, as he tried to bring back to
the inanimate frame the spark of life, he noticed, as he had not done
before, how changed, how shrunken were the face and figure of his
father. He knew his father had been ailing for some time, but he had not
realised how far the mischief had gone. And on the top of this illness
had come, first the death of Silwood, and now the discovery of Morris
Thornton lying dead in Silwood's chambers! Small wonder was it, he
thought, that the shock of this last circumstance, combined with all
that had preceded it, had proved too much for his father.
For some minutes he continued his efforts to re-animate Francis
Eversleigh, but without avail. The porter and the locksmith gave him
what assistance they could; finally the former suggested that a doctor
should be sent for.
"Yes," agreed Gilbert; "go round to King's College Hospital. I know one
or two of the doctors there; take my card, and get one of them if you
can. Say the case is urgent."
But the porter, who by this time was swelling with the importance of the
affair--an importance in which he saw himself included--had another
suggestion to make.
"After I get a doctor," he said to Gilbert, whom he knew to be Francis
Eversleigh's son, "don't you think it would be well if I fetched a
policeman? There's the dead body," he added significantly, "and of
course there will have to be an inquest."
"Quite right," replied Gilbert; "but get the doctor first."
And the porter withdrew, more important than ever.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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