Page:The Millbank Case - 1905 - Eldridge.djvu/136

 thirty miles, he had caused to be interrogated. It was if the earth had opened and swallowed up the man—or—and he stood above the falls and looked at the water rushing over them, as if he would question it and wrest an answer from it. It was certain that the man—a man, whose personality he could merely guess at—had disappeared. It was like ridding himself of a nightmare to throw off the uneasiness that oppressed him.

Immediately on his return, Trafford sought an interview with Mrs. Parlin. The time was coming when the inquest must be re-convened, and as yet there was nothing of advance since the hour when it had adjourned. Even he was grown impatient and he could not marvel that a woman, under the nervous strain of his employer, should be fast becoming irritably so.

"We have no right," she said, "to leave an innocent man under suspicion as Jonathan has been left. If we can't find the murderer, we can at least prove that it isn't he."

"Unfortunately, until we find the man, the majority will believe him guilty," Trafford replied.