The Classic Mystery Collection - Arthur Conan Doyle [5900]
"No, I realize that, Colonel. Oh, it is hard - so hard! If we only knew!"
"We may know," said the colonel gently.
"Soon ?" she asked hopefully.
"Sooner than you expect," he answered with a smile. "Now I must attend the jury session."
It was brief, and not at all sensational, much to the regret of the reporters for the New York papers who flocked to the quiet and fashionable seaside resort. The upshot of the matter was that the chemists for the state reported that Mr. Carwell had met his death from the effects of some violent poison, the nature of which resembled several kinds, but which did not analyze as being any particular one with which they were, at present, familiar.
There were traces of both arsenic and strychnine, but mingled with them was some narcotic of strange composition, which was deadly in its effect, as had been proved on guinea pigs, some of the residue from the stomach and viscera of the dead man having been injected into the hapless animals.
Harry Bartlett was not called to the stand, but, pale from his confinement, sat an interested and vital spectator of the proceedings.
The prosecutor announced that the efforts of his detectives had resulted in nothing more. There was not sufficient evidence to warrant accusing any one else, and that against Harry Bartlett was of so slender and circumstantial a character that it could not be held to have any real value before the grand jury nor in a trial court.
"What is your motion, then?" asked the coroner.
Well, I don't know that I have any motion to make," said Mr. Stryker. "If this were before a county judge, and the prisoner's counsel demanded it, I should have to agree to a nolle pros. As it is I simply say I have no other evidence to offer at this time."
"Then the jury may consider that already before it?" asked Billy Teller.
"Yes."
"You have heard what the prosecutor said, gentlemen," went on the coroner. "You may retire and consider your verdict."
This they did, for fifteen minutes - fifteen nerve-racking minutes for more than one in the improvised courtroom. Then the twelve men filed back, and in answer to the usual questions the foreman announced:
"We find that Horace Carwell came to his death through poison administered by a person, or persons, unknown."
There was silence for a moment, and then, as Bartlett started from his seat, a flush mantling his pale face, Viola, with a murmured "Thank God!" fainted.
CHAPTER XX
A MEETING
Harry Bartlett walked from the court a free man, physically, but not mentally. He felt, and others did also, that there was a stain on him - something unexplained, and which he would not, or could not, clear up - the quarrel with Mr. Carwell just before the latter's death. And even to Viola, when, in the seclusion of her home, she asked Harry about it after the trial, or rather, the verdict, he replied:
"I can not tell. It was nothing that concerns you or me or this case. I will never tell."
And Colonel Ashley, hearing this, pondered over it more and more.
The little green book was all but forgotten during these days, and as for the rods, lines, and reels, Shag arranged them, polished them and laid them out, in hourly expectation of being called on for them, but the call did not come. The colonel was after bigger fish than dwelt in the sea or the rivers that ran into the sea.
It was a week after the rather unsatisfactory verdict of the coroner's jury that Bartlett, out in his "Spanish Omelet," came most unexpectedly on Captain Gerry Poland, some fifty miles from Lakeside. The captain was in his big machine, and he seemed surprised on meeting