George Chard felt it bitterly hard that after his years of service he should earn not only the reproof of the head office, but that suspicion should in some way indefinitely be attached to him.

There had been an inquiry into the robbery, and although there was nothing in the evidence to directly implicate either himself or his manager, the tone of head-office letters was by no means comforting.

George had done his best to clear his superior officer. Truth is good, but it is not always a matter of telling the whole truth in every-day life.

If people were to say all they knew about each other, society would fall to pieces rapidly—as rapidly as an iceberg might melt in a volcano.

George Chard knew this, and certain matters of carelessness on his manager’s part had not come out. It is one thing for a directorate or a department to frame an elaborate code of rules, and another thing for their servants to follow them to the letter.

No rules, natural or man-made, can ever be exactly adhered to.

[154]

In repayment for his subordinate’s fealty, the Pig had whispered certain private insinuations against George to the inspector.

Consequently he became a “marked man.”

In every branch of Government employment, in every big commercial organisation there are “marked men.” They remain in the employ, pending a valid excuse for their dismissal, perhaps for years, but they do not get on. They are never promoted; they never receive an increase in salary, and they are never placed in any position of responsibility.

George Chard knew this, and he saw, as soon as the inquiry had closed, that his career in the Bulk and Bullion was practically at an end.

The thought stung him like nettles. He was a proud man, and his pride had been humbled; he was a conscientious man also, and the thought of his responsibility—of the mother and the five girls dependent on him—alone prevented him writing at once to the head office and demanding either an honourable acquittal or an honourable discharge. But then, again, what charge was he to be acquitted of? None had been brought against him. No one had accused him. No one had dared insinuate to him openly that he had anything to do with the removal of the money from the bank safe, yet he felt that an unseen sword of Damocles hung over his head.

It is this anticipation of disaster—this hourly expectation of something going to happen—that wears out the strongest energy and shatters the strongest nervous system.

[155]

The town of Wharfdale, unknown to George, was still indefinitely divided into factions upon the question of the bank robbery, and it was not improbable that in a very little time someone would have accidentally given him evil news if the matter of the robbery had not sunk into insignificance before the discovery of the body of a murdered man down the river.

The news was brought up by the Greenwich the morning after George, the deck-hand, had had such remarkable fishing.

First came the outlines which Rumour filled in for herself, dwelling lovingly on the knife wounds.

Then gossiping tongues began to shape fancies into main facts. A body had certainly been discovered, and people who saw it were convinced that a foul and brutal murder had taken place.

The craving for sensation, like the craving for opium or chloral, is progressive—the patients must keep on increasing the dose. The newspaper down the river published an “extraordinary” on the morning following George’s discovery. The “extraordinary,” printed on a “galley-slip,” was sold all over the district at a penny.

As the day wore on a second edition of the “extraordinary” was issued containing two or three additional paragraphs of news, and the opinion which the “authorities” were supposed to entertain on the subject.

The publication of the paper proper was deferred a day to enable the particulars of the inquest to be inserted.

Then the little sheet put up a record circulation.

[156]

The editor congratulated himself on the headlines. Years afterwards, when strangers came into the office, he would take down the file and point them out with pride. The first word. “Murder,” was set in woodblock type an inch and a half deep: “And Inquest,” in the German decorative capitals usually used for illuminated texts by printers of religious literature.

The actual evidence adduced at the inquest was meagre.

George, the deck-hand, was examined by the Coroner at great length. The court went into the minutest details regarding the finding of the body, even bringing out the witness’s private opinions about the matter—what he thought and what he felt at the time and afterwards.

The Sergeant was sworn. He corroborated George in respect to the fishing; detailed the appearance of the corpse—to which the audience listened lovingly—told how he had left the body tied up by the wharf until daylight, removed same with the assistance of a constable to a shed, and summoned the doctor.

The doctor was an heroic figure at the inquest. It was with difficulty that the crowded court refrained from cheering when he stepped into the witness-box. With the greatest urbanity the presiding J.P., who was acting Coroner, requested him to explain the technical terms he used in his evidence. The doctor bowed—a perfectly splendid bow it was generally admitted—and courteously gave the common English of the thing to his audience.

A sigh of satisfaction went round when he swore[157] positively that it would be impossible for deceased to have inflicted upon himself the wounds as detailed.

The district had not had such a sensation for years. The identity of the deceased would have remained a matter of absolute doubt had it not been for an accident. A religious crank, whose name was casually “Joe,” happened to arrive in the place on the morning of the discovery.

Numbers of people had been taken to the shed by the police.

Some thought they might be able to say who it was, and others wanted to tell their friends in future years that they had seen an approved hall-marked murder in cold flesh.

None of those people had thrown the least light on the subject. The body remained unrecognised until the religious crank went in.

He kissed the book with a reverent smack, and stood awaiting the interrogations of the Sergeant and the J.P.

The audience, with bated breath, leaned eagerly forward to catch every word of the religious crank’s low replies.

“It happened quite accidentally,” he said, that he had gone into the shed where the body on which enquiry was being held had been conveyed, he believed, from the wharf. He could not swear that it was the same body which had been taken out of the river in the morning.

He knew Constable Flanagan. He was upon the[158] Lord’s work when he was requested to enter the shed. He had not heard the constable’s evidence.

It was not a fact that he had recognised the body. (Murmur of disappointment ran throughout the court). All he had said to Constable Flanagan was that he believed he had seen deceased before at a meeting in one of the river towns. He would not swear positively that it was deceased, but he believed it was. If he remembered rightly, the man’s name was Gooch-Peter. He could not say what occupation he followed. This happened about six or eight weeks before. That was all he knew about the matter. The name mig............