The Argosy — page 373: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

354 Verena Fontaine's Rebellion. Captain Tanerton did not adopt her views. He shook his head, and said Sir Dace it could nothave been. Sir Dace was at his house in the Marylebone Road at thevery hourthecalamity happened off Tower Hill. I followed suit, bearing out Jack’s word. Was I not at the Marylebone Road that evening myself, playing chess with Coralie ?—and was not Sir Dace shut up in his library all the time, and never came out of it ? Alice listened, and looked puzzled to death. But she held to her own opinion. And when a fit of desperate obstinacy takes pos- session of a woman without rhyme or reason, you cannot shake it. As good try to argue with the whistling wind. She did not pretend to see how it could have been, she said, but Sir Dace was guilty. And she haunted Paul and Chandler’s office at Islip, praying them to take the matter up. At length, to soothe her, and perhaps to prevent her carrying it elsewhere, they promised they would. And of course they had to make some show of doing it. One evening Tom Chandler came to Crabb Cot and asked to see | me alone. ‘‘I want you to tell me all the particulars you remember of that fatal night,” hé began, when I went to him in the Squire’s little room. ‘‘I have taken down Captain Tanerton’s testimony, and I must have yours, Johnny.” ‘But, are you going to stir in it? ” ‘We must do something, I suppose. Paul thinks so. I am going to London to-morrow on other matters, and shall use the opportunity to make an enquiry or two. It is rather a strange piece of business altogether,” added Mr. Chandler, as he took his place at the table and drew the inkstand towards him. ‘ John Tanerton Is innocent. I feel sure of that.” ‘¢ How strongly Mrs. Tanerton has taken it up!” ‘Pretty well for that,” answered Tom Chandler, a smile on his good-natured face. ‘‘She told us yesterday in the office that it must be the consciousness of guilt which has worried Sir Dace to a skeleton. Now then, we’ll begin.” He dotted down my answers to his questions, also what I volun- tarily added. Then he took a sheet of paper from his pocket, closely written upon, and compared its statements—they were Tanerton’s—with mine. Putting his finger on the paper to mark a place, he looked at me. “Did Sir Dace speak of Pym or of Captain Tanerton that night, when you were playing chess with Miss Fontaine ?” ‘¢ Sir Dace did not come into the drawing-room. He had left the dinner-table in a huff to shut himself up in his library, Miss Fontaine said ; and he stayed in it.” “Then you did not see Sir Dace at all that night ?” “Oh yes, later—when Captain Tanerton and young Saxby came up to tell him of the death. We then all went down to Ship Street together. You have taken that down.” | CONMICLIOO <Saeroy ag] oa