The Argosy — page 374: what you’re looking at

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

Verena Fontaine’s Rebeltion. 355 “ True,” said Chandler. ‘‘ Well, I cannot make much out of it as it stands,” he concluded, folding the papers and putting them in his pocket-book. ‘‘What do you say is the number of the house in the Marylebone Road ?” I told him, and he went away, wishing he could accept my offer of staying to drink tea with us. ‘ Look here, Chandler,” I said to him at the front door: ‘* why don’t you take down Sir Dace Fontaine’s evidence, as well as mine and Tanerton’s ?”’ ‘‘T have done it,” he answered, ‘I was with Sir Dace to-day. Mrs. Tanerton’s suspicions are of course—absurd,” he added, making a pause, as if at a loss for a suitable word; ‘‘ but for her peace of mind, poor lady, we would like to pitch upon the right individual if we can. And as yet he seems to be a myth.” The good ship, ose of Delhi, came gaily into port, and took up her berth in St. Katharine’s Docks as before; for she had been chartered for London. Her owners, the Freemans, wrote at once from Liverpool to Captain Tanerton, begging him to resume com- mand. Jack wrote back, and declined. How is it that whispers get about? Do the birds in the air carry them P—or the winds of Heaven? In some cases it seems im- possible that anything else can have doneit. Paul and Chandler, John Tanerton and his wife, the Squire and myself: we were the only people cognisant of the new suspicion that Alice was striving to cast on Sir Dace; one and all of us had kept silent lips: and yet, the rumour got abroad. Sir Dace Fontaine was accused of knowing more about Pym’s death than he ought to know, and Tom Chandler was in London for the purpose of investigating it. This might not have mattered ie much for ordinary ears, but it reached those of Sir Dace. Coralie Fontaine heard it from Mary Ann Letsom. In Mary Ann’s indignation at the report, she spoke it out to Coralie; and Coralie, laughing at the absurdity of the thing, repeated it to Sir Dace. How “/e received it, or what he said about it, did not transpire. A stagnant kind of atmosphere seemed to hang over us just then, like the heavy, unnatural calm that precedes the storm. Sir Dace got weaker day by day, more of a shadow; Herbert Tanerton and his brother were still at variance, so far as Jack’s future was con- cerned ; and Mr. Chandler seemed to have taken up his abode in London for good. “Does he zever mean to come back?” demanded Alice one day of the Squire: and her lips and cheeks were red with fevér as she asked it. ‘The truth was, that some cause of Paul and Chandler’s then on at Westminster was prolonging itself out—even when it did begin—unconscionably. COMIC DOO SS (GO