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Then, as standard novelists expressively inform us—‘all was a blank!’ and in the morning the blank was filled up with the words ‘STATION-HOUSE,’ and the station-house was filled up with Mr. Thomas Potter, Mr. Robert Smithers, and the major part of their wine-vault companions of the preceding night, with a comparatively small portion of clothing of any kind.
Yet I knew, both from circumstances and my own instinct that no such planning had occurred. I was a victim, not of malice but of blind chance, or shall I say of Providence? As to this one key having been slipped from the rest and used to open the wine-vault for wine which nobody wanted and nobody drank this must be classed with the other incongruities which might yet lead to my enlargement.
Would it were the pleasure of the worthy divine bounty that I were at this present hour in the close at Seuille, or at Innocent's the pastry-cook over against the painted wine-vault at Chinon, though I were to strip to my doublet, and bake the petti-pasties myself. Honest man, could not you throw me ashore? you can do a world of good things, they say.
As we went from empty room to room, the thunder seemed rolling on the very roof, and the sharp flashes of lightning appeared to put out our lamps and then kindle them again. We traversed the upper regions, mounting by a ladder to the attic; then descended into the cellar and the wine-vault.
I had told all I knew about these in my direct examination; also about such matters as the bottles found on the kitchen table, the leaving of my keys at the Cumberland house, and the fact, well known, that the two bottles of wine left in the wine-vault and tabulated by the steward as so left in the list found in my apartments, were of an exclusive brand unlikely to be found anywhere else in town.
He denies his guilt, but can produce no witnesses in support of his assertions. Yet such witnesses may exist. Indeed, we think that one such does exist. The man who took the bottles from the club-house's wine-vault did so within a few minutes of the time when this crime was perpetrated on your sister. He should be able to give valuable testimony for or against Elwood Ranelagh.
I slept, though a question of no small importance was agitating my mind, demanding instant consideration and a definite answer before I again saw this friend and adviser. I woke to ask if the suggestion which had come to me in our brief conversation about the bottles taken from the wine-vault, was the promising one it had then appeared, or only a fool's trick bound to end in disaster.
I may as well own the truth, and be done with it. I was in the clubhouse. I did rob the wine-vault; I did carry off the bottles to have a quiet spree, and it was to some place on Cuthbert Road I went. But, when I've admitted so much, I've admitted all. I saw nothing of my sister's murder; saw nothing of what went on in the rooms upstairs.
"He says that he found this window unlocked, when he approached it with the idea of escaping that way." Arthur Cumberland remained unmoved. The district attorney wheeled back. "There were a number of bottles taken from the wine-vault; some half dozen were left on the kitchen table. Why did you trouble yourself to carry up so many?" "Because my greed outran my convenience.
The district attorney's voice sounded thin, almost piercing, as he made this remark: "You entered by an open window. Why didn't you go in by the door?" "I hadn't the key. I had only abstracted the one which opens the wine-vault. The rest I left on the ring. It was the sight of this key, lying on our hall-table, which first gave me the idea.
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