Page:The Millbank Case - 1905 - Eldridge.djvu/212

 escaped into the woods, but not without a severe wound, I think."

"I have a message for the man who attempted to make the arrest."

"You can deliver it to me," said Trafford.

"You say the man was a murderer. I have no wish to know his name; but I am charged only to speak to one man, and I shall know him by a name. You can give it me?"

"If it's my name you want, it's Trafford. The murderer attempted first to rob or murder me in the covered bridge at Millbank, before he committed the actual murder," answered the detective.

"I did not doubt before," the priest answered, with something of stateliness; "only when a trust is given, one must be certain. The message is that the man who was drowned was not murdered. It was an accident, in which the one barely escaped and was unable to save the other."

"Even so," Trafford retorted, "the other might have had a chance to escape, if it hadn't been for a broken collar-bone, and for that the man who denies the murder was responsible."