Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-39.djvu/73

Rh must confess that I was not entirely unprepared for this turn of affairs. There was a strong prima facie probability that the burglars were guilty; but, on the other hand, apart from their supposed presence in the neighborhood at the time, there was every reason why they should have abstained from any capital crime. If Henry had cornered them, so that they could not escape, it would have paid them better to surrender than to get away by the sacrifice of his life; and the fact that Henry's pistol was found undischarged in his pocket is evidence the more that he could not have put them in peril of either life or liberty. He was attacked unawares, and, so far as can be seen, unprovoked—that is to say, by some enemy who had been cherishing a grudge against him and had improved this opportunity to satisfy it.

There was one circumstance, too, which struck me at the time, but which I mentioned to no one, that may have had something to do with his being surprised in the way he was. This circumstance was a flask of brandy, nearly empty, in a side-pocket of his coat. I know that the flask was full just before he started for the lake, because he produced it in my room, when he and John looked in to say good-by, and took a pull at it. As he had already drunk a good deal, even for him, during the day, it is fair to surmise that he must have been somewhat over-weighted by midnight. John, it is true, does not seem to have noticed anything especially distraught in his behavior; but then John is a man who has room in his mind for but one thing at a time, and just then it was full of burglars: moreover, he could have seen but little of Henry after they took up their allotted stations in ambush. Tom the groom would be a more expert witness, if I chose to interrogate him; but I did hear him observe, as if recalling a consolatory circumstance, that "Master 'Enry was a-feelin' mighty good the night it 'appened." It is even possible that he may have dropped asleep.

But these speculations are unimportant. Since it is proved that he was not killed "in the way of business," as the detectives put it, it follows that he was a victim to some enemy; and the next step is to find out who his enemies were. At first sight this would not seem difficult, for Henry was a man to make friends with everybody, and therefore his enemies should be few. But, upon second thoughts, no one can be said to know much about Henry's real life; and it is often the good-natured, easy-going men whose enemies, when they have any, are the bitterest and most unrelenting. Who can say into how many desperate scrapes Henry's lax ways with women, for instance, may have led him? Some revengeful husband or brother may have been following him halfway round the world, waiting his opportunity to strike his blow. Manifestly, we could hope to apprehend such a person only by the merest