Page:Hornung - Rogues March.djvu/100

80 man’s stolen property, which was then being obtained within.

“Now, in such cases,” said Mr. Harding, feeling for another coin, “what is done with the dead man’s papers?”

“Well, first you’ve got to find ’em,” replied the constable, with a grin.

“But in this case you have obviously found something; or how would you know who he was?”

“We found no papers, however.”

“No papers!”

“Not a scrap; but his linen was marked; and then we knew all about our gentleman. I’m sorry to say we’ve known all about him for some time. It was only the shocking state his head—”

“That will do,” said Daintree, bending over Mr. Harding’s chair. “You are ill, sir,” he whispered. “Let me take you home at once.”

Harding yielded, and tottered to his carriage, muttering, “I waited for him hour after hour; and this was why; and this was why!”

Claire was still upstairs on their return, and Mr. Harding nerved himself with a glass of brandy before going to her with the news. But it shook her less than it had shaken him. Her first question was the last to be expected by one as completely in the dark as Nicholas Harding. She wanted to know with what kind of weapon the crime had been committed. He told her (what the constable had told him) with a heavy ash stick, whereupon she nodded singularly, as much as to say that was what she expected. In fact she had divined the worst from the very beginning. But her apathy blinded him to everything else: he asked her