“He did--yes, he said his name was--now What the mischief did he say it was? Stanley?--no--Stanmore?--I think he said his name was Stanmore. No! have it now--Standish; and he mentioned that he had just come from Midleigh. Oh, there's no doubt that he fired the shot. Why on earth haven't you tried to arrest him? He can't have gone very far as yet.” “He was arrested half an hour ago,” said the Chief Constable. “Heavens above! He didn't run away?” cried Cyril. “On the contrary, he walked straight into the bank the first thing this morning, and tried to make a row because the cashier hadn't arrived,” said Major Borrowdaile. “He waited there, and when the news came that Mr. Westwood was dead and the doors of the bank were about to be closed, he refused to leave the premises. That was where he made a mistake; for he was arrested by my sergeant on suspicion, though the sergeant had heard that Mr. Westwood had shot himself. And yet we hear that there is no intelligence apart from Scotland Yard!” CHAPTER IX. |The London evening papers were full of the name of Westwood, and the pleasant little country town of Brackenhurst was during the afternoon overrun with representatives of the Press, the majority of whom were, to the amazement of the legitimate inhabitants, far more anxious to obtain some items relating to the personal history--the more personal the better--of Claude Westwood, than to become acquainted with the local estimate of the character of his brother. The people of the neighbourhood could not understand how it was possible that the world should regard the reappearance of a distinguished explorer after an absence of eight years with much greater interest than the murder of a provincial banker--even supposing that Mr. Westwood was murdered, which was to place the incident of his death in the most favourable light--from the standpoint of those newspapers that live by sensational headlines. The next morning every newspaper worthy of the name had a leading article upon the Westwoods, and pointed out how the tragic elements associated with the death of one of the brothers were intensified by the fact that if he had only lived for a few hours longer, he would have heard of the safety of his distinguished brother, to whom he was deeply attached. While almost every newspaper contained half a column telling the story--so far as it was known--of the supposed murder of Richard Westwood, a far greater space was devoted to the story of the escape of Claude Westwood from the savages of the Upper Zambesi, who had killed every member of his expedition and had kept him in captivity for eight years. The people of Brackenhurst could not understand such a lapse of judgment on the part of the chief newspaper editors: they were, of course, very proud of the fact that Claude Westwood was a Brackenshireman, but they were far prouder of the distinction of being associated with the locality of a murder about which every one in the country was talking.