North and South
Page 205The inspector bowed but did not speak. The lady standing before
him showed no emotion, no fluttering fear, no anxiety, no desire
to end the interview. The information he had received was very
vague; one of the porters, rushing out to be in readiness for the
train, had seen a scuffle, at the other end of the platform,
between Leonards and a gentleman accompanied by a lady, but heard
no noise; and before the train had got to its full speed after
starting, he had been almost knocked down by the headlong run of
the enraged half intoxicated Leonards, swearing and cursing
awfully. He had not thought any more about it, till his evidence
was routed out by the inspector, who, on making some farther
station-master that a young lady and gentleman had been there
about that hour--the lady remarkably handsome--and said, by some
grocer's assistant present at the time, to be a Miss Hale, living
at Crampton, whose family dealt at his shop. There was no
certainty that the one lady and gentleman were identical with the
other pair, but there was great probability. Leonards himself had
gone, half-mad with rage and pain, to the nearest gin-palace for
comfort; and his tipsy words had not been attended to by the busy
waiters there; they, however, remembered his starting up and
cursing himself for not having sooner thought of the electric
left with the idea of going there. On his way, overcome by pain
or drink, he had lain down in the road, where the police had
found him and taken him to the Infirmary: there he had never
recovered sufficient consciousness to give any distinct account
of his fall, although once or twice he had had glimmerings of
sense sufficient to make the authorities send for the nearest
magistrate, in hopes that he might be able to take down the dying
man's deposition of the cause of his death. But when the
magistrate had come, he was rambling about being at sea, and
mixing up names of captains and lieutenants in an indistinct
last words were a curse on the 'Cornish trick' which had, he
said, made him a hundred pounds poorer than he ought to have
been. The inspector ran all this over in his mind--the vagueness
of the evidence to prove that Margaret had been at the
station--the unflinching, calm denial which she gave to such a
supposition. She stood awaiting his next word with a composure
that appeared supreme.