Will you come with us?’
A little winding through some muddy alleys that might have been deposited
by the last ill-savoured tide, brought them to the wicket-gate and bright
lamp of a Police Station; where they found the Night-Inspector, with a pen
and ink, and ruler, posting up his books in a whitewashed office, as
studiously as if he were in a monastery on top of a mountain, and no
howling fury of a drunken woman were banging herself against a cell-door
in the back-yard at his elbow. With the same air of a recluse much given
to study, he desisted from his books to bestow a distrustful nod of
recognition upon Gaffer, plainly importing, ‘Ah! we know all about you,
and you’ll overdo it some day;’ and to inform Mr Mortimer Lightwood and
friends, that he would attend them immediately. Then, he finished ruling
the work he had in hand (it might have been illuminating a missal, he was
so calm), in a very neat and methodical manner, showing not the slightest
consciousness of the woman who was banging herself with increased
violence, and shrieking most terrifically for some other woman’s liver.
‘A bull’s-eye,’ said the Night-Inspector, taking up his keys. Which a
deferential satellite produced. ‘Now, gentlemen.’
With one of his keys, he opened a cool grot at the end of the yard, and
they all went in. They quickly came out again, no one speaking but Eugene:
who remarked to Mortimer, in a whisper, ‘Not much worse than Lady
Tippins.’
So, back to the whitewashed library of the monastery—with that liver
still in shrieking requisition, as it had been loudly, while they looked
at the silent sight they came to see—and there through the merits of
the case as summed up by the Abbot. No clue to how body came into river.
Very often was no clue. Too late to know for certain, whether injuries
received before or after death; one excellent surgical opinion said,
before; other excellent surgical opinion said, after. Steward of ship in
which gentleman came home passenger, had been round to view, and could
swear to identity. Likewise could swear to clothes. And then, you see, you
had the papers, too. How was it he had totally disappeared on leaving
ship, ‘till found in river? Well! Probably had been upon some little game.
Probably thought it a harmless game, wasn’t up to things, and it turned
out a fatal game. Inquest to-morrow, and no doubt open verdict.
‘It appears to have knocked your friend over—knocked him completely
off his legs,’ Mr Inspector remarked, when he had finished his summing up.
‘It has given him a bad turn to be sure!’ This was said in a very low
voice, and with a searching look (not the first he had cast) at the
stranger.
Mr Lightwood explained that it was no friend of his.
‘Indeed?’ said Mr Inspector, with an attentive ear; ‘where did you pick
him up?’
Mr Lightwood explained further.
Mr Inspector had delivered his summing up, and had added these words, with
his elbows leaning on his desk, and the fingers and thumb of his right
hand, fitting themselves to the fingers and thumb of his left. Mr
Inspector moved nothing but his eyes, as he now added, raising his voice:
‘Turned you faint, sir! Seems you’re not accustomed to this kind of work?’
The stranger, who was leaning against the chimneypiece with drooping head,
looked round and answered, ‘No. It’s a horrible sight!’
‘You expected to identify, I am told, sir?’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you identified?’
‘No. It’s a horrible sight. O! a horrible, horrible sight!’
‘Who did you think it might have been?’ asked Mr Inspector. ‘Give us a
description, sir. Perhaps we can help you.’
‘No, no,’ said the stranger; ‘it would be quite useless. Good-night.’
Mr Inspector had not moved, and had given no order; but, the satellite
slipped his back against the wicket, and laid his left arm along the top
of it, and with his right hand turned the bull’s-eye he had taken from his
chief—in quite a casual manner—towards the stranger.
‘You missed a friend, you know; or you missed a foe, you know; or you
wouldn’t have come here, you know. Well, then; ain’t it reasonable to ask,
who was it?’ Thus, Mr Inspector.
‘You must excuse my telling you. No class of man can understand better
than you, that families may not choose to publish their disagreements and
misfortunes, except on the last necessity. I do not dispute that you
discharge your duty in asking me the question; you will not dispute my
right to withhold the answer. Good-night.’
Again he turned towards the wicket, where the satellite, with his eye upon
his chief, remained a dumb statue.