He paused and looked hard. Ha! so far good! It was clear the
landlord didn't know Waring was the name of the young man who had
just left the billiard-room. This was lucky, indeed, for if he HAD
known it now, and had taxed Guy then and there, before his own very
face, with being the murderer of this unknown person at Mambury,
Gilbert Gildersleeve felt no course would have been open for him
save to tell the whole truth on the spot unreservedly. Try as he
would, he COULDN'T see another man arrested before his very eyes
for the crime he himself had really, though almost unwittingly,
committed.
"Waring," he repeated slowly, like one who endeavoured to collect
his scattered thoughts; "what sort of person was he, do you know?
And how did the police come to get a clue to him?"
The landlord, nothing loth, went off into a long and circumstantial
story of the discovery of the body, with minute details of how the
innkeeper at Mambury had traced the supposed murderer--who gave no
name--by an envelope which he'd left in his bedroom that evening.
The county was up in arms about the affair to-day. All Dartmoor
was being searched, and it was supposed the fellow was in hiding
somewhere in the neighbourhood of Tavistock or Oakhampton. They'd
catch him by to-night. The landlord wouldn't be surprised, indeed,
now he came to think on it, if his truest himself--here a very long
pause--were retained by-and-by for the prosecution.
Gilbert Gildersleeve drew a deep breath, unperceived. That was
all, was it? The pause had unnerved him. He talked some minutes,
as unconcernedly as he could, though trembling inwardly all the
while, about the murder and the murderer. The landlord listened
with profound respect to the words of legal wisdom as they dropped
from his lips; for he knew Mr. Gildersleeve by common repute as
one of the ablest and acutest of criminal lawyers in all England.
Then, after a short interval, the big burly man, moving his guilty
fingers nervously over the seal on his watch-chain, and assuming
as much as possible his ordinary air of blustering self-assertion,
asked, in an off-hand fashion, "By the way, let me see, I've, some
business to arrange; what's the number of my friend Mr. Billington's
bedroom?"
The landlord looked up with a little start of surprise. "Mr.
Billington?" he said, hesitating. "We've got no Mr. Billington."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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