Page:Jepson--The Loudwater mystery.djvu/181

Rh was a young man of uncommon discretion, and it was plain that she was suffering anxiety enough.

At the end of her fruitless questioning she sighed and said: "Of course, the whole affair is of no great interest to you really."

"It isn't of very great interest to me," said Mr. Manley. "You see, the victim of the crime, if it was a crime, was such an uninteresting creature. Nature, as I've told you before, intended him for a bull, changed her mind when it was too late to make a satisfactory alteration, and botched it. You must admit that the bull man is a very dull kind of creature, unless he can make things lively for you by prodding you with his horns. When he is dead, he is certainly done with."

"I wish he was done with," she said, with a sigh.

"Well, as far as you are concerned, he is done with, surely," he said, in some surprise.

"Of course, of course," she said quickly. "But still, he seems likely to give a great deal of trouble to somebody; and if there is a trial, how am I to know that my name won't be brought up?"

"I don't think there's a chance of it," he said. "How should it be brought up?"

"One never knows," she said, with a note of nervous dread in her voice.

"Well, as far as I'm concerned, he'll get no help in making a posthumous nuisance of himself from me; and I'm inclined to think that, as things are