King of the Castle

He held out his hand for the bottle, and the barber passed it at once.

“Oh, no, sir,” he said, “nothing of that kind.”

With the action born of long habit, the doctor took out the cork, sniffed, held the bottle up to the light, shook it, applied a finger to the neck, shook the bottle again, tasted the drug at the end of his finger, and quickly spat it out.

“Why, Wimble, what the dickens are you doing with chloral?”

“Nothing, sir, nothing; only an old bottle.”

“Throw it away, then,” said the doctor hastily. “Don’t take it. Very bad habit. Recollect that’s how poor Mr Gartram came to his end. Good-day. Come round, then, at three.”

“Yes, sir, certainly, sir; but you forgot to – ”

“Oh, I beg pardon. Yes, of course,” said the doctor, handing back the bottle, and then, beating himself with his right-hand glove, he walked hastily out of the place.

Wimble stood looking after his visitor till he was out of sight, and then walked slowly back into his museum to operate upon the dead bird, which lay where he had placed it upon a shelf ready for skinning.

“Ah,” he said mournfully, as he rubbed his nose slowly with the cork of the little bottle, “what a world of deception it is. There is nothing honest. Were all more or less like specimens. A front, and me not to have known it all this time. If she had taken me sooner into her confidence, I wouldn’t have cared. The doctor did. Hah! I wonder who ever suspected him, with his clear dark locks, as I keep so right. Yes, he’s a deceiver, and without me what would he look like in a couple of months? – Deceit, deceit, deceit. – And I trusted her so. It’s taking a mean advantage of a man.

“Well, it was a mark of confidence, and perhaps I have been all wrong. It shows she is waiting to trust me, and ought I to? Well, we shall see.”

Michael Wimble looked a little brighter, and then his eyes fell upon the bottle, which he shook as the doctor had shaken it, took out the cork, applied a finger to it, and tasted in the same way, quickly spitting it out as he became aware of the sharp taste.

“What did he say: chloral? Don’t take any of it. No, I sha’n’t do that.”

Wimble suddenly became thoughtful and dreamy as he replaced the cork, and he seemed to see the bright ray of light once more on the dry patch of sand beyond where the tide had reached.

Then he thought about Gartram’s death by chloral.

“Might have been the same bottle,” he said thoughtfully; “took what he wanted, and then threw it out of the window.”

He looked at the tiny drop in the bottom, turned it over and over, and his thoughts seemed to run riot in his brain, till he grew confused at their number. But after a time he followed the one theme again.

“What a piece of evidence to have brought up at the inquest. How important a witness I should have been. But why should he have thrown the bottle out of the window? He didn’t poison himself. He wasn’t the man to do that. Thousands upon thousands of money. Everything he could wish for. Regular king of the place. He wouldn’t do that – he couldn’t.”

Wimble stood with his brow wrinkled up, and then all at once, as if startled by the suddenness of a thought, he dropped the bottle on the oilcloth and drew back, gazing at it in a horrified way, his eyes dilating, and the white showing all round.

“Somebody must have given it to him.”

“No, no. They wouldn’t do that; it would be murder. No one would try to murder him.”

He passed his hand over his forehead, and drew it away quite wet.

“His money!” he half whispered, as the thought seemed to grow and grow. “They say he kept thousands up there. Or some one who hated him, as lots of people did.”

Wimble dropped into his shaving chair, and sat thinking of the numbers of workpeople who had quarrelled with Gartram and spoken threateningly; but he did not feel that it was possible for any one of these to have done such a deed.

“Some one who hated him – some one who wanted to get rid of him – some one who, who – no, no, no, it’s too horrible to think about. I wouldn’t know if I could.”

He lifted the little bottle between his finger and thumb, and drew back with his arm extended to the utmost to hurl the little vessel across the road, and right out toward the sea.

But he checked himself thoughtfully, drew back, and went across his shop to the side. Here he stood, bottle in hand, thinking deeply, before slowly opening the drawer and placing it in a corner.

“It would be very valuable,” he said softly, “if that was the bottle some one used to poison the old man; and if it was, why, I haven’t got a specimen in my museum that would attract people half so much. ‘The Danmouth murder; the bottle that held the poison,’ Why, they’d come in hundreds to see it.”

He took the phial out again, for it seemed to have a strange fascination for him, and after staring at it till his hands grew moist, he took out a piece of white paper, carefully rolled it therein, and placed it in another drawer, which he had to unlock, and fastened afterwards with the greatest care.

“That bottle’s worth at least a hundred pound,” he said huskily, as he put the key in his pocket. “It will be quite a little fortune to me.

“Somebody who hated him – somebody who wanted him out of the way,” he said, as he tapped his teeth with the key. “No, I can’t think, and won’t try any more. I’m not a detective, and I don’t want to know.

“Some one who hated him and had quarrelled with him, and who wanted him out of the way.”

In spite of his determination not to think any more of the subject, it came back persistently, and at last, to clear his brain and drive away the thoughts, he took down his hat, and determined to let the museum take care of itself for an hour, while he walked down along the beach.

He knew, as he came to this determination, that he would go straight down beneath the Fort, and look at the spot where he found the bottle; but, all the same, he felt that he must go, and, putting on his hat, he took the key out from inside of the door, and standing just inside the shop, began to put the key into the outer portion of the lock, as the thought came again more strongly than ever —

“Some one who hated him and had quarrelled with him, and wanted him out of the way.”

He was in the act of closing his door as a quick step came along the path, and as the door closed, a voice said to some one —

“How do, Edward?” and the speaker passed on with creel on back and salmon rod over his shoulder.

Wimble darted back into the museum, shut the door, and stood trembling in the middle of the place.

“Oh!” he said, in a hoarse whisper, as the great drops stood out upon his brow. “What did Brime say?”

He shivered, and his voice dropped into a whisper.

“Mr Chris Lisle! He was there that night!”

Volume Three – Chapter Five.

Mr Wimble is in Doubt

“Want lodgings, sir?” said Reuben Brime taking his short black pipe from his lips, and gazing straight out to sea, as if he thought there was plenty of room for a good long rest out there. Then straightening himself from having a good, thoughtful lean on the cliff rail, where he had been having his evening’s idle after the day’s work done, he turned, and, looking thoughtfully at a youngish man in tweeds, as if he were a plant not growing quite so satisfactorily as could be wished, he said again, in a tone of mild inquiry, – “Lodgings?”

“Yes, lodgings,” said the new-comer shortly.

“Well, I was trying to think of some, sir; and I could have told you of the very thing if something as I had in hand had come up – I mean off.”

“Indeed!”

“Yes, sir,” said the gardener thoughtfully. “I don’t mind who knows it. I’d got as nice a little cottage in my eye as any man would wish to have there, the money to buy all the furniture, as much more as was wanted, theirs being very old; and I could have said to you, ‘There’s a bedroom and a setten’-room, and the best of attendance.’”

“But it is not in hand, eh?”

“In hand, sir? No, sir; nothing like in hand.”