“I felt,” Anita said, by way of further explanation, “that Mrs. Bates ought to know all. So, when Mrs. Adams practically put me out of her house, and I had no wish to accept Mr. Trask’s invitation to come over here, nor,” she smiled affectionately at Lockwood, “could I fall in with your crazy plans—I just went next door and told Mrs. Bates all about it. She was very dear and sweet to me, and now, if you please, I will go back there. I am weary and exhausted—I cannot stand any more. But when you want me, I can be found at Mrs. Bates’. I leave all matters to be decided or settled, in the hands of Mr. Lockwood and Mr. Stone. Fibsy, dear, will you escort me home?”
With a suddenly acquired dignity, Fibsy rose, and stood by her side, and in a moment the two went away together.
When the boy returned the others were absorbed in the discussion of the mysterious death of John Waring.
“I’m inclined to give it up,” Fleming Stone said, thinking deeply.
“Don’t do it, F. Stone,” Fibsy said, earnestly. “It’s better to find out. You never have gave up a case.”
“No. Well, Fibs, which way shall we look?”
A strange embarrassment came over the boy’s face, and then he said, diffidently:
“Say, gentlemen, could I be left alone in this room for a little while? I don’t say I kin find out anythin’—but I do wanta try.”
The lapse into careless enunciation told Stone how much in earnest his young colleague was, and he rose, saying, “You certainly may, my boy. The rest of us will have a conference in some other room, as to what part of Miss Austin’s story must be made public.”
Left to himself, Fibsy went at once to the bookcase that held the defaced copy of Martial, that John Waring had been reading the night he died.
Opening the volume at the blood-stained page, the unlettered boy eagerly read the lines. Tried to read them, rather, and groaned in spirit because he knew no Latin.
Small wonder that he was nonplused, for this was all he read:
Qua vicina pluit Vipsanis porta columnis Et madet assiduo lubricus imbre lapis, In iugulum pueri, qui roscida tecta subibat, Decidit hiberno praegravis unda gelu: Cumque peregisset miseri crudelia fata, Tabuit in calido vulnere mucro tener. Quid non saeva sibi voluit Fortuna licere? Aut ubi non mors est, si iugulatis aquae?