The Greatest Works of J. S. Fletcher (64+ Titles in One Illustrated Edition). J. S. Fletcher

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СКАЧАТЬ of some recent repairs to the masonry—there was a full day’s work before him. All day he would be in and out of Paradise with his barrow, wheeling away the rubbish he gathered up. The foreman had looked in on him once or twice; he had seen him just before noon, when he appeared to be in his usual health—he had made no complaint, at any rate. Asked if he had happened to notice where Collishaw had set down his dinner basket and his tin bottle while he worked, he replied that it so happened that he had—he remembered seeing both bottle and basket and the man’s jacket deposited on one of the box-tombs under a certain yew-tree—which he could point out, if necessary.

      Bryce’s account of his finding of Collishaw amounted to no more than a bare recital of facts. Nor was much time spent in questioning the two doctors who had conducted the post-mortem examination. Their evidence, terse and particular, referred solely to the cause of death. The man had been poisoned by a dose of hydrocyanic acid, which, in their opinion, had been taken only a few minutes before his body was discovered by Dr. Bryce. It had probably been a dose which would cause instantaneous death. There were no traces of the poison in the remains of his dinner, nor in the liquid in his tin bottle, which was old tea. But of the cause of his sudden death there was no more doubt than of the effects. Ransford had been in the court from the outset of the proceedings, and when the medical evidence had been given he was called. Bryce, watching him narrowly, saw that he was suffering from repressed excitement—and that that excitement was as much due to anger as to anything else. His face was set and stern, and he looked at the Coroner with an expression which portended something not precisely clear at that moment. Bryce, trying to analyse it, said to himself that he shouldn’t be surprised if a scene followed—Ransford looked like a man who is bursting to say something in no unmistakable fashion. But at first he answered the questions put to him calmly and decisively.

      “When this man’s clothing was searched,” observed the Coroner, “a box of pills was found, Dr. Ransford, on which your writing appears. Had you been attending him—professionally?”

      “Yes,” replied Ransford. “Both Collishaw and his wife. Or, rather, to be exact, I had been in attendance on the wife, for some weeks. A day or two before his death, Collishaw complained to me of indigestion, following on his meals. I gave him some digestive pills—the pills you speak of, no doubt.”

      “These?” asked the Coroner, passing over the box which Mitchington had found.

      “Precisely!” agreed Ransford. “That, at any rate, is the box, and I suppose those to be the pills.”

      “You made them up yourself?” inquired the Coroner.

      “I did—I dispense all my own medicines.”

      “Is it possible that the poison we have beard of, just now, could get into one of those pills—by accident?”

      “Utterly impossible!—under my hands, at any rate,” answered Ransford.

      “Still, I suppose, it could have been administered in a pill?” suggested the Coroner.

      “It might,” agreed Ransford. “But,” he added, with a significant glance at the medical men who had just given evidence. “It was not so administered in this case, as the previous witnesses very well know!”

      The Coroner looked round him, and waited a moment.

      “You are at liberty to explain—that last remark,” he said at last. “That is—if you wish to do so.” “Certainly!” answered Ransford, with alacrity. “Those pills are, as you will observe, coated, and the man would swallow them whole—immediately after his food. Now, it would take some little time for a pill to dissolve, to disintegrate, to be digested. If Collishaw took one of my pills as soon as he had eaten his dinner, according to instructions, and if poison had been in that pill, he would not have died at once—as he evidently did. Death would probably have been delayed some little time until the pill had dissolved. But, according to the evidence you have had before you, he died quite suddenly while eating his dinner—or immediately after it. I am not legally represented here—I don’t consider it at all necessary—but I ask you to recall Dr. Coates and to put this question to him: Did he find one of those digestive pills in this man’s stomach?”

      The Coroner turned, somewhat dubiously, to the two doctors who had performed the autopsy. But before he could speak, the superintendent of police rose and began to whisper to him, and after a conversation between them, he looked round at the jury, every member of which had evidently been much struck by Ransford’s suggestion.

      “At this stage,” he said, “it will be necessary to adjourn. I shall adjourn the inquiry for a week, gentlemen. You will—” Ransford, still standing in the witness-box, suddenly lost control of himself. He uttered a sharp exclamation and smote the ledge before him smartly with his open hand.

      “I protest against that!” he said vehemently. “Emphatically, I protest! You first of all make a suggestion which tells against me—then, when I demand that a question shall be put which is of immense importance to my interests, you close down the inquiry—even if only for the moment. That is grossly unfair and unjust!”

      “You are mistaken,” said the Coroner. “At the adjourned inquiry, the two medical men can be recalled, and you will have the opportunity—or your solicitor will have—of asking any questions you like for the present—”

      “For the present you have me under suspicion!” interrupted Ransford hotly. “You know it—I say this with due respect to your office—as well as I do. Suspicion is rife in the city against me. Rumour is being spread—secretly—and, I am certain—from the police, who ought to know better. And—I will not be silenced, Mr. Coroner!—I take this public opportunity, as I am on oath, of saying that I know nothing whatever of the causes of the deaths of either Collishaw or of Braden—upon my solemn oath!”

      “The inquest is adjourned to this day week,” said the Coroner quietly.

      Ransford suddenly stepped down from the witness-box and without word or glance at any one there, walked with set face and determined look out of the court, and the excited spectators, gathering into groups, immediately began to discuss his vigorous outburst and to take sides for and against him.

      Bryce, judging it advisable to keep away from Mitchington just then, and, for similar reasons, keeping away from Harker also, went out of the crowded building alone—to be joined in the street outside by Sackville Bonham, whom he had noticed in court, in company with his stepfather, Mr. Folliot.

      Folliot, Bryce had observed, had stopped behind, exchanging some conversation with the Coroner. Sackville came up to Bryce with a knowing shake of the hand. He was one of those very young men who have a habit of suggesting that their fund of knowledge is extensive and peculiar, and Bryce waited for a manifestation.

      “Queer business, all that, Bryce!” observed Sackville confidentially. “Of course, Ransford is a perfect ass!”

      “Think so?” remarked Bryce, with an inflection which suggested that Sackville’s opinion on anything was as valuable as the Attorney-General’s. “That’s how it strikes you, is it?”

      “Impossible that it could strike one in any other way, you know,” answered Sackville with fine and lofty superiority. “Ransford should have taken immediate steps to clear himself of any suspicion. It’s ridiculous, considering his position—guardian to—to Miss Bewery, for instance—that he should allow such rumours to circulate. By God, sir, if it had been me, I’d have stopped ‘em!—before they left the parish pump!”

      “Ah?” said Bryce. “And—how?”

      “Made СКАЧАТЬ