FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   >>  
s column. A name, a familiar name, caught my eye; the name of one who, I had fondly fancied, had: long-lain unburied in my cellar at the 'pike. My princely _havanna_ fell unheeded on the marble pavement of the _patio_, as with indescribable amazement I read the following 'par.' 'William Evans, the man accused of the murder of Sir Runan Errand, will be tried at the Newnham Assizes on the 20th. The case, which excites considerable interest among the _elite_ of Boding and district, will come on the _tapis_ the first day of the meeting. The evidence will be of a purely circumstantial kind.' Every word of that 'par' was a staggerer. I sat as one stunned, dazed, stupid, motionless, with my eye on the sheet. Was ever man in such a situation before? Your wife commits a murder. You become an accessory after the fact. You take steps to destroy one of the two people who suspect the truth. And then you find that the man on whom you committed murder is accused of the murder which you and your wife committed. The sound of my mother's voice scolding Philippa wakened me from my stupor. They were coming. I could not face them. Doubling up the newspaper, I thrust it into my pocket, and sped swiftly out of the _patio_. Where did I go? I scarcely remember. I think it must have been to one of the public gardens or public-houses, I am not certain which. All sense of locality left me. I found at last some lonely spot, and there I threw myself on the ground, dug my finger-nails into the dry ground, and held on with all the tenacity of despair. In the wild whirl of my brain I feared that I might be thrown off into infinite space. This sensation passed off. At first I thought I had gone mad. Then I felt pretty certain that it must be the other people who had gone mad. I had killed William Evans. My wife had killed Runan Errand. How, then, could Runan Errand have been killed by William Evans? 'Which is absurd,' I found myself saying, in the language of Eukleides, the grand old Greek. Human justice! What is justice? See how it can err! Was there ever such a boundless, unlimited blunder in the whole annals of penny fiction? Probably not. I remember nothing like it in all the learned pages of the _London Journal_ and the _Family Herald_. Mrs. Henry Wood and Miss Braddon never dreamed of aught like this. Philippa _must_ be told. It was too good a joke. Would she laugh? Would she be alarmed? Picture me lying on t
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   >>  



Top keywords:
murder
 

William

 

killed

 

Errand

 

Philippa

 

justice

 

public

 
committed
 

people

 
remember

accused

 

ground

 

lonely

 

thought

 

passed

 
sensation
 

tenacity

 
despair
 

finger

 

thrown


locality

 
feared
 

infinite

 

Braddon

 

Herald

 

Family

 

learned

 
London
 

Journal

 

dreamed


alarmed
 

Picture

 
Probably
 

fiction

 

language

 

Eukleides

 

absurd

 

pretty

 

blunder

 

unlimited


annals

 

boundless

 

Boding

 
district
 
interest
 

excites

 
considerable
 

meeting

 

staggerer

 

stunned