must have been struck by the manner of your wife’s kinsman under my examination.”
“Great Heaven!” cried Wyllard, “you don’t mean to tell me that you suspect Bothwell Grahame of any hand in this business?”
“In perfect frankness, between man and man, I believe that young man to be in some way—either as principal or accessory—concerned in the murder of that girl.”
“My dear Distin, you must be mad.”
“Come now, my dear Wyllard, you cannot pretend that you did not notice the strangeness of Mr. Grahame’s manner this afternoon: his refusal to answer my question about his business in Plymouth.”
“He was angry at your catechising him in that manner; and I must confess that your question appeared to the last degree irrelevant, even to me.”
“Granted. My question was irrelevant. But it was a test question. I should never have cross-examined Mr. Grahame, if I had not seen reason for suspecting him before the inquiry began. I was painfully impressed by his manner the night I dined here with him; and I believe, from certain indications dropped unconsciously by your Coroner, that he too saw reason for suspecting Mr. Grahame. His manner today confirms my suspicion. I am deeply grieved that it should be so, on your wife’s account.”
“You had need be sorry for her. Why, Bothwell is like a brother to her. It would break her heart,” said Wyllard, strongly agitated.
He had risen from the table, and was walking slowly up and down the room, between the windows opening wide upon the gray evening sky, and the warm lamplight within. Joseph Distin could not see his face, but he could see that he was strongly moved.
“My dear fellow, let us hope that Mrs. Wyllard will never know anything about this suspicion of mine,” said Distin soothingly. “I have—so far—not one scrap of evidence against Mr. Grahame; except the evidence of looks and manner, and the one fact of his refusal to say what he was doing in Plymouth the day of the girl’s death. There is nothing in all that to bring a man to the gallows. I may have my own ideas about this mystery, and Mr. Heathcote may have pretty much the same notion, but there is nothing to touch your wife’s cousin so far. I shall go back to town, and try to forget the whole matter. All you have to do is to keep your own counsel, and take care that Mrs. Wyllard knows nothing of what has passed in strictest confidence between you and me.”
“I would not have her know it for worlds. It would break her heart; it might kill her. Women cannot bear such shocks. And to think that a man can be suspected of a crime on such grounds—suspected by you, a student of crime and criminals—because of a moody manner, a refusal to answer a question! The whole thing seems too absurd for belief.”
“Say that the thing is absurd, and that for once in his life Joe Distin has made a fool of himself. Take your wife to Aix-les-Bains—or to Biarritz——”
Julian Wyllard started at that last word as if he had been stung.
“What the deuce is the matter with you, or with Biarritz?” asked Distin sharply.
“Nothing. My mind was wandering, that’s all. You were saying——”
“That you had better forget all that has passed between us to-night—forget the death of that girl—make a clean slate. Take your wife to some foreign watering-place, the brightest and gayest you can find. And let Bothwell Grahame dree his weird as best he may. The catastrophe on the railway will be forgotten in a week.”
“I doubt it. We have not much to think about at Bodmin, and we exaggerate all our molehills into mountains. That girl’s death will be the talk of the town for the next six months.”
“And yet people go on existing in such places, and think they are alive!” exclaimed Distin.
He left Penmorval after breakfast next morning, without having seen Bothwell, who was out on the hills breaking in a new horse while the family were at breakfast. He had been out since five o’clock, the butler told Mrs. Wyllard.
“Is he riding Glencoe?” she asked, with a look of alarm.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“He is a dreadful horse, I know, Julian,” she said. “Manby told me about him only yesterday. He had narrowly escaped being thrown the day before; and he said that Glencoe was a really dangerous horse, and that we ought to get rid of him.”
“So that he may break somebody else’s bones,” suggested Mr. Distin. “That is what a good coachman always advises.”
“And now Bothwell has gone out on him, alone.”
“You would not have him take some one to pick him up if he were thrown,” said Wyllard. “My dear Dora, there is not the slightest occasion for alarm. The horse is young, and a little gay; but your cousin excels as a rough-rider, and there will be no harm done.”
“But why should he want to ride that horse?” said Dora; “I’m sure Manby would advise him not.”
“The very reason why he should do it,” replied her husband.
“I wonder if he is trying to kill himself while I am eating my breakfast calmly here?” speculated Joseph Distin. “He must know that I suspect him; and he may think that the game is up.”
Whatever Bothwell’s intention might have been, he came back to Penmorval before eleven o’clock, bringing home the big bay hunter bathed in sweat, and as tame as a sheep.
“A fine, honest horse! Only wants riding,” he said, as he flung the bridle to the groom, who had been watching for him at the stable-gates, with an air of expecting to see broken bones.
In the hall Bothwell met Dora, cool, and calm, and beautiful, in her white muslin breakfast gown. She was bringing in a basket of flowers from the hothouse, to be arranged by her own hands.
“Is that London lawyer gone yet?” asked Bothwell curtly.
He could not be civil even to his cousin when he spoke of Joseph Distin.
“Yes, he has gone—I hope, never to come back again,” said Dora. “He is really a very well-bred man, and he made himself most agreeable here; but he seemed to bring with him an atmosphere of crime. I could not help thinking of all the horrible cases he must have been concerned in, and that he had grown rich by the crimes of mankind. He could find out nothing about that poor girl’s death, it seems, although he is so clever.”
“Which goes rather to establish my view that the girl fell out of the train by accident,” replied Bothwell.
Chapter 5.
People Will Talk.
The year was a month older since Joseph Distin went back to town, baffled and angry with himself, yet glad for his friend’s sake that his discoveries had gone no further. The heather was purpling on the hills, where the dwarf furze flashed here and there into patches of gold. The tourist season had set in; but the tourist for the most part avoided the little town of Bodmin, nestling snugly inland among the hills, and turned his face to the sea, and the wild
