Maurice Clissold also looked at the girl as she stood up at the end of the table in the little bit of clear space left for the witnesses. A shaft of sunshine slanted from the skylight. The room was built out from the house, and lighted from the top, an apartment usually devoted to Masonic meetings and public dinners. In that clear radiance the girl's face was wondrously spiritualized. Easy to fancy that some being not quite of this common earth stood there, and that from those pale lips the awful truth would speak as if by the voice of revelation.

So Maurice Clissold thought as he looked at her. Never till this moment had she appeared to him beautiful; and now it was no common beauty which he beheld in her, but a strange and spiritual charm impossible of definition.

187

'You were the last person who saw Mr. Penwyn alive, except his murderer?' said Mr. Pergament, interrogatively, after the usual formula had been gone through.

'I opened the shop door for him when he went out, after supper.'

'At what o'clock?'

'Half-past two.'

'Was he perfectly sober at that time?'

'Oh yes,' with an indignant look.

'Was he going back to the "Waterfowl" alone?'

'Quite alone.'

'Did he say anything particular to you just at last?—anything that it might be important for us to know?'

A faint colour flushed the pale face at the question.

'Nothing.'

'Is that all you can tell us?'

'There is only one thing more,' the girl answered, calmly. 'I stood at the door a few minutes to watch Mr. Penwyn walking up the street, and just as he turned the corner a man passed on the opposite side of the way in the same direction.'

188

'Towards Lowgate?'

'Yes.'

'What kind of a man?'

'He was rather tall, and wore an overcoat, and a thick scarf around his neck, as if it had been winter.'

'Did you see his face?'

'No.'

'Or notice anything else about him—anything besides the overcoat and the muffler?'

'Nothing.'

'You say he was tall. Was he as tall as that gentleman, do you suppose?—Stand up for a moment, if you please, Mr. Clissold.'

Clissold stood up. He was above the average height of tall men, well over six feet.

'No, he was not so tall as that.'

'Are you sure of that? A man would look taller in this room than in the street. Do you allow for that difference?' inquired Mr. Pergament.

'I do not believe that the man I saw that night was so tall as Mr. Clissold, nor so broad across the shoulders.'

'That will do.'

189

The chief constable next gave evidence as to the finding of the body, the watch buried in the ditch, the empty purse. Then came the landlady of the 'Waterfowl,' with an account of the high words between the two gentlemen, and Mr. Clissold's abrupt departure on the following morning. The Spinnersbury detectives followed, and described Mr. Clissold's arrest, the tracing of footsteps behind the hedge and down to the towpath, and how they had compared Mr. Clissold's boot with the footprints without being able to arrive at any positive conclusion.

'It might very easily be the print of the same foot in a different boot,' said Higlett. 'It isn't so much the difference between the size of the feet as the shape and cut of the boot. The man must have been tall, the length of his stride shows that.'

There was no further evidence. The coroner addressed the jury.

After a few minutes' consultation they returned their verdict,—'That the deceased had been murdered by some person or persons unknown.'

Thus Maurice Clissold found himself a free man190 again, but with the uncomfortable feeling of having been, for a few days, supposed the murderer of his bosom friend. It seemed to him that a stigma would attach to his name henceforward. He would be spoken of as the man who had been suspected, and who was in all probability guilty, but who had been let slip because the chain of evidence was not quite strong enough to hang him.

'I suppose if I had been tried in Scotland the verdict would have been "Non Proven,"' he thought.

One only means of self-justification remained open to him, viz., to find the real murderer. He fancied that Higlett and Smelt looked at him with unfriendly eyes. They were aggravated by the loss of the reward. They would turn their attention in a new direction, no doubt, but considerable time had been lost while they were on a wrong scent.

Maurice Clissold could not quite make up his mind about those Bohemians of the Eborsham Theatre; whether this vagabond heavy father might not know something more than he cared to reveal about James Penwyn's fate. He had given his191 evidence with a sufficiently straightforward air, and the girl was above doubt. Truth was stamped on the pale sorrowful face,—truth, and a silent grief. Could that grief have its root in some fatal secret? Did she know her father guilty of this crime, and shield him with heroic falsehoods, only less sublime than truth?

She stood by her father's side, a little way apart from the crowd, as she had stood throughout the inquiry, intently watchful.

While Maurice lingered, debating whether he should follow up the strolling players, Churchill Penwyn came straight across the room towards him, before the undispersed assembly.

'I congratulate you on your release, Mr. Clissold,' he said, offering his hand with a friendly air, 'and permit me to assure you that I, for one, have been fully assured of your innocence throughout this melancholy business.'

'I thank you for doing me justice, Mr. Penwyn. I was very fond of your cousin. I liked him as well as if he had been my brother, and if the question had been put to me whether harm should come to192 him or me, I believe I should have chosen the evil lot for myself. His mother was a second mother to me, God bless her. She asked me to take care of him a few hours before her death, and I felt from that time as if I were responsible for his future. He was little more than a boy when his poor mother died. He was little more than a boy the last time I saw him alive, the night we had our first quarrel.'

'What was the quarrel about?'

Mr. Clissold shrugged his shoulders, and glanced round the room, which was clearing by degrees, but not yet empty.

'It's too long a story to enter upon here,' he said.

'Come and dine with me at the "Castle," at eight o'clock, and tell me all about it,' said Churchill.

'You're very good. No. I can't manage that. I have something to do.'

'What is that?'

'To begin a business that may take a long time to finish.'

'May I ask the nature of that business?'

'I want to find James Penwyn's murderer.'

193

Churchill shrugged his shoulders and smiled—a half compassionate smile.

'My dear sir,' he said, 'do you think that the murderer is ever found in such a case as this—given a delay of three days and nights—ample ............