United States or Suriname ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Slocum, who avoided Richard the rest of the day with a persistency that must have ended in forcing itself upon his notice, had he not been so engrossed by the work which had accumulated during his absence. Mr. Slocum had let the correspondence go to the winds, and a formidable collection of unanswered letters lay on Shackford's desk.
"Well, I wouldn't give three or four cents to have you marry Slocum's daughter. Richard, you can't pull any chestnuts out of the fire with my paw." Mr. Shackford's interrogation and his more than usual conciliatory manner had lighted a hope which Richard had not brought with him. Its sudden extinguishment was in consequence doubly aggravating. "Slocum's daughter!" repeated Mr. Shackford.
Shackford's lawyer, who placed seals on that and on the drawers of an escritoire which stood in the corner and contained other manuscript. The instrument with which the fatal blow had been dealt for the autopsy showed that there had been but one blow was not only not discoverable, but the fashion of it defied conjecture.
"When will that be, sir?" "To-night, probably." The unceremonious departure of Blake formed the theme of endless speculation at the tavern that evening, and for the moment obscured the general interest in old Shackford's murder. "Never to let on he was goin'!" said one. "Didn't say good-by to nobody," remarked a second. "It was devilish uncivil," added a third.
There was so little hint of the aristocrat in Lemuel Shackford's sordid life and person that no one suspected him of even self-esteem. He went as meanly dressed as a tramp, and as careless of contemporary criticism; yet clear down in his liver, or somewhere in his anatomy, he nourished an odd abstract pride in the family Shackford. Heaven knows why!
"Why, yes," said Margaret, with an anxious look. "You frighten me with your mysteriousness." "I do not mean to be mysterious, but I don't quite know how to tell you about Mr. Taggett. He has been working underground in this matter of poor Shackford's death, boring in the dark like a mole, and thinks he has discovered some strange things." "Do you mean he thinks he has found out whoi killed Mr.
His disgust at having been left out in the cold, though he was in no professional way concerned in the task of discovering the murderer of Lemuel Shackford, had caused Lawyer Perkins instantly to repudiate Mr. Taggett's action. "Taggett is a low, intriguing fellow," he had said to Justice Beemis; "Taggett is a fraud." Young Shackford's ingenuous manner now confirmed Mr. Perkins in that belief.
The mutilated document which had so grimly clung to its secret was at last deciphered. It proved to be a recently executed will, in which the greater part of Lemuel Shackford's estate, real and personal, was left unconditionally to his cousin. "That disposes of one of Mr. Taggett's theories," was Mr. Slocum's unspoken reflection.
Word Of The Day