“He must have been a bad man, that old Sandy,” said Loveday sympathetically.
“You’re right! you’re right!” cried Mr. Craven, springing up excitedly from his chair and seizing her by the hand. “If ever a man deserved his death, he did. For thirty years he held that rod over my head, and then—ah where was I?”
He put his hand to his head and again sank, as if exhausted, into his chair.
“I suppose it was some early indiscretion of yours at college that he knew of?” said Loveday, eager to get at as much of the truth as possible while the mood for confidence held sway in the feeble brain.
“That was it! I was fool enough to marry a disreputable girl—a barmaid in the town—and Sandy was present at the wedding, and then—” Here his eyes closed again and his mutterings became incoherent.
For ten minutes he lay back in his chair, muttering thus; “A yelp—a groan,” were the only words Loveday could distinguish among those mutterings, then suddenly, slowly and distinctly, he said, as if answering some plainly-put question: “A good blow with the hammer and the thing was done.”
“I should like amazingly to see that hammer,” said Loveday; “do you keep it anywhere at hand?”
His eyes opened with a wild, cunning look in them.
“Who’s talking about a hammer? I did not say I had one. If anyone says I did it with a hammer, they’re telling a lie.”
“Oh, you’ve spoken to me about the hammer two or three times,” said Loveday calmly; “the one that killed your dog, Captain, and I should like to see it, that’s all.”
The look of cunning died out of the old man’s eye—“Ah, poor Captain! splendid dog that! Well, now, where were we? Where did we leave off? Ah, I remember, it was the elemental sounds of speech that bothered me so that night. Were you here then? Ah, no! I remember. I had been trying all day to assimilate a dog’s yelp of pain to a human groan, and I couldn’t do it. The idea haunted me—followed me about wherever I went. If they were both elemental sounds, they must have something in common, but the link between them I could not find; then it occurred to me, would a well-bred, well-trained dog like my Captain in the stables, there, at the moment of death give an unmitigated currish yelp; would there not be something of a human note in his death-cry? The thing was worth putting to the test. If I could hand down in my treatise a fragment of fact on the matter, it would be worth a dozen dogs’ lives; so I went out into the moonlight—ah, but you know all about it—now, don’t you?”
“Yes. Poor Captain! did he yelp or groan?”
“Why, he gave one loud, long, hideous yelp, just as if he had been a common cur. I might just as well have let him alone; it only set that other brute opening his window and spying out on me, and saying in his cracked old voice: ‘Master, what are you doing out here at this time of night?’”
Again he sank back in his chair, muttering incoherently with half-closed eyes.
Loveday let him alone for a minute or so; then she had another question to ask.
“And that other brute—did he yelp or groan when you dealt him his blow?”
“What, old Sandy—the brute? he fell back—Ah, I remember, you said you would like to see the hammer that stopped his babbling old tongue—now didn’t you?”