"New Zealand?" struck in Captain Morford agitatedly. "I say, that's a rum go, isn't it, Mr. Narkom. New Zealand is where the Comstocks come from--or, rather, the father and mother did."
"By Jove! Cleek, that looks suspicious, old chap," chimed in Narkom. "Don't think, do you, that there can possibly be any connection between the two cases? In other words, that that fellow you suspected in New Zealand didn't really die after all?"
"Shortly, the chemist? Not a doubt about his death, Mr. Narkom. I was in the bar-room when he was killed. Three bullets went through his head, and he was as dead as Napoleon Bonaparte by the time he struck the floor. The methods may be the same, but not the man--there is not the ghost of possibility of there being any connection between the two. But let us give the Captain a chance to explain the case. When, where, and how did these mysterious murders begin, Captain, if you please?"
"At Lilac Lodge, over Windsor way," replied the Captain, trying to answer all three questions at once. "They started about a week after the Comstocks went to live there. And the thing was so appalling, the place seemed so certainly under a curse, that although he had paid a good round sum for it, and had spent a pot of money having the house decorated and the garden laid out just as Miriam and her mother fancied it--Miriam is Miss Comstock, my fiancée, Mr. Cleek--nothing would induce Mr. Harmstead to stop in it another hour after the second murder occurred."
"Mr. Harmstead! Who is Mr. Harmstead, Captain?"
"The late Mrs. Comstock's bachelor uncle--a very rich old chap, who was once a sheep-farmer in New Zealand, and afterwards in Australia. Mrs. Comstock hadn't seen him since she was a very little girl until he came to England some few months ago to settle down and to take care of her children and her."
"How did it happen that she hadn't seen him in all that time? I take it there must have been some good reason, Captain?"
"Yes, rather. You see it was like this: The Harmsteads--Mrs. Comstock was a Harmstead by birth, and Uncle Phil was her father's only brother--the Harmsteads had never been well to-do as a family: indeed none of them but dear old Uncle Phil ever had a hundred pounds they could call their own, so when Miss Harmstead's father died, which was about eight months after his brother left New Zealand and went to Australia, she married a young joiner and cabinet-maker, George Comstock, to whom she had long been engaged, and a few weeks later, fancying there would be a better chance for advancement in his trade in England than out there, Mr. Comstock sold out what few belongings he had in the world and brought his wife over here."