"Drake, there has been a murder at Myrtle Villa down the Jubilee Road, leading to the brickfields. A man called Moxton has been stabbed. His wife came for Dr. Ellis, and I ran on to tell you!"
The inspector heard this startling intelligence with a phlegm begotten by twenty years' experience of similar reports. "Who done it, Mr. Cass? Does the wife know?"
"No; she says she heard a cry, and ran out to find her husband dying on the garden path. He died in her arms."
"I don't know. I never asked her. That is your business, Drake. Come along, Ellis is with her and the dead man."
"Oh, he is dead, then?" remarked the inspector, leisurely putting on his cap and cloak.
Leaving the station in charge of an underling, Drake called a policeman, and followed Cass into the windy night. The two, with the constable tailing after them, marched military fashion along several deserted and lampless streets, until they turned into the Jubilee Road, a dark thoroughfare of empty, roofless houses and incomplete pavements. Civilisation had not yet established order in this region, and the street in embryo ended suddenly on the verge of naked lands. Beyond twinkled the red and green signal lights of the railway, and between, piles of bricks were heaped in Babylon-like mounds. Myrtle Villa was the last house on the right abutting on this untrimmed plain; and the three men were guided to it by a winking light in the garden. It was that of a lantern held by Mrs. Moxton, and shed yellow rays on the face of the dead man. Ellis, kneeling beside the corpse, completed a startling and dramatic picture.
"Oh!" cried the woman, with something like dismay, as the light revealed uniforms, "the police!"
"Yes, ma'am," said Drake, glancing sharply at her white cheeks, "we have come to see about this matter. Is the gentleman dead, doctor?"
"I should think so. Look here!" Ellis rolled over the body and showed a wound under the left shoulder-blade, round which the blood had coagulated. "The poor devil must have died within ten minutes after the blow was struck."
"He died in my arms," moaned Mrs. Moxton. "Oh, Edgar!"
"Did he tell you who stabbed him, ma'am?"
The inspector took the lantern from her shaking hand, and swung it round between corpse and gate. The path was of beaten gravel, and no footmarks were visible; but here and there a stain of blood soaked into the ground, and from this Drake drew his conclusions.
