Doctor and butler hurried into the house; then, but not until then,
Hilton Fenley and the keeper became aware of Farrow, now within a few
yards. At sight of him, Fenley seemed to recover his faculties; the
mere possibility of taking some definite action brought a tinge of
color to a pallid and somewhat sallow face.
"Ah! Here is the constable," he cried. "Go with him, Bates, and have
that artist fellow arrested!"
"Meaning Mr. Trenholme, sir?" inquired the policeman, startled anew by
this unexpected reference to the man he had parted from so recently.
"I don't know his name; but Bates met him in the park, near the lake,
just after the shot was fired that killed my father."
"But I met him, too, sir. He didn't fire any shot. He hadn't a gun. In
fact, he spoke about the shootin', and was surprised at it."
"Look here, Farrow, I am incapable of thinking clearly; so you must
act for the best. Some one fired that bullet. It nearly tore my father
to pieces. I never saw anything like it. It was ghastly--oh, ghastly!
The murderer must be found. Why are you losing time? Jump into the
car, and Brodie will take you anywhere you want to go. The roads, the
railway stations, must be scoured, searched. Oh, do something, or I
shall go mad!"
Hilton Fenley did, indeed, wear the semblance of a man distraught.
Horror stared from his deep-set eyes and lurked in the corners of his
mouth. His father had been struck dead within a few seconds after they
had separated in the entrance hall, both having quitted the breakfast
room together, and the awful discovery which followed the cry of an
alarmed servant had almost shaken the son's reason.
Farrow was hardly fitted to deal with a crisis of such magnitude, but
he acted promptly and with fixed purpose--qualities which form the
greater part of generalship.
"Bates," he said, turning a determined eye on the keeper, "where was
you when you heard the shot?"
"In the kennels, back of the lodge," came the instant answer.
"And you kem this way at once?"
"Straight. Didn't lose 'arf a minute."
"So no one could have left by the Easton gate without meeting you?"
"That's right."
"And you found Mr. Trenholme--where?"
"Comin' away from the cedars, above the lake."
"What did he say?"
"Tole me about the shot, an' pointed out the Quarry Wood as the place
it kem from."
"Was he upset at all in his manner?"
"Not a bit. Spoke quite nateral-like."
"Well, between the three of us, you an' me an' Mr. Trenholme, we
account for both gates an' the best part of two miles of park. Where
is Jenkins?"
"I left him at the kennels."
"Ah!"
The policeman was momentarily nonplussed. He had formed a theory in
which Jenkins, that young Territorial spark, figured either as a fool
or a criminal.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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