For a minute or two they stood and stared at one another blankly,
those unacknowledged half-brothers, of whom one now knew, while
the other still ignored, the real relationship that existed between
them. Then Granville Kelmscott turned away without one word of
greeting. Guy trembled in his shame. He knew he was discovered. But
before his very eyes, Granville took the paper he had been reading
by that uncertain light, and, raising it high in his hand, flung
it over into the sea with spasmodic energy. It was the special
edition containing the account of the man McGregor's death and Guy
Waring's supposed connection with the murder. Granville Kelmscott,
indeed, couldn't bring himself to denounce his own half-brother.
He stared at him coldly for a second with a horrified face.
Then he said, in a very low and distant voice, "I know your identity,
Mr. Billington," with a profoundly sarcastic accent on the assumed
name, "and I will not betray it. I know your secret, too; and I
will keep that inviolate. Only, during the rest of this voyage, do
me the honour, I beg of you, not to recognise me or speak to me in
any way at any time."
Guy slunk away in silence to his own cabin. Never before in his
life had he known such shame. He felt that his punishment was
indeed too heavy for him.
CHAPTER XXVII.
SOMETHING TO THEIR ADVANTAGE.
At Tilgate and Chetwood next morning, two distinguished households
were thrown into confusion by the news in the papers. To Colonel
Kelmscott and to Elma Clifford alike that news came with crushing
force and horror. A murder, said the Times, had been committed in
Devonshire, in a romantic dell, on the skirts of Dartmoor. No element
of dramatic interest was wanting to the case; persons, place, and
time were all equally remarkable. The victim of the outrage was Mr.
Montague Nevitt, confidential clerk to Messrs. Drummond, Coutts,
and Barclay, the well-known bankers, and himself a familiar figure
in musical society in London. The murderer was presumably a young
journalist, Mr. Guy Waring, not unknown himself in musical circles,
and brother of that rising landscape painter, Mr. Cyril Waring,
whose pictures of wild life in forest scenery had lately attracted
considerable attention at the Academy and the Grosvenor. Mr. Guy
Waring had been arrested the day before on the pier at Dover, where
he had just arrived by the Ostend packet. It was supposed by the
police that he had hastily crossed the Channel from Plymouth to
Cherbourg, soon after the murder, to escape detection, and, after
journeying by cross-country routes through France and Belgium, had
returned via Ostend to the shores of England. It was a triumphant
vindication of our much maligned detective system that within a few
hours after the discovery of the body on Dartmoor, the supposed
criminal should have been recognised, arrested, and detained among
a thousand others, in a busy port, at the very opposite extremity
of southern England.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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