"I'm mixed. Life has been very strenuous during the past fifteen hours. If you love me, James, put my poor head under a pump, or I'll be dreaming that our lightning sketch performer here, long John Trenholme, late candidate for the P. R. A., but now devoted to the cult of Hymen, is going to marry Eliza, of the White Horse, and that the fair Sylvia is pledged to cook us a dinner tomorrow night--or is it tonight? Oh, Gemini, how my head aches!"
"Don't mind a word he's saying, Mr. Trenholme," put in Winter. "Hilton Fenley hit him a smack with that rifle, and it developed certain cracks already well marked. But he's a marvelously 'cute little codger when you make due allowance for his peculiar ways, and he has a queer trick of guessing at future events with an accuracy which has surprised me more times than I can keep track of."
Trenholme was too good a fellow not to put up with a little mild chaff of that sort. He looked at the horizon, where the faint streaks of another dawn were beginning to show in the northeast.
"Please God," he said piously, "if I'm deemed worthy of such a boon, I'll marry Sylvia Manning, or no other woman. And, when the chance offers, Eliza of the White Horse shall cook you a dinner to make your mouth water. Thus will Mr. Furneaux's dream come true, because dreams go by contraries!"
Winter tried to persuade his mercurial-spirited friend to snatch a few hours' rest. The Police Inspector obligingly offered a bed; but short of a positive order, which the Superintendent did not care to give, nothing would induce Furneaux to let go his grip on the Fenley case.
"Wait till the doctor's car comes back," he urged. "The chauffeur will carry the story a few pages farther. At any rate, we shall know where he dropped Fenley, and that is something."
Winter produced a big cigar, and Trenholme felt in his pockets for pipe and tobacco.
"No, you don't, young man," said the big man firmly. "You're going straight to your room in the White Horse. And I'll tell you why. From what I have heard about the Fenleys, they were a lonely crowd. Their friends were business associates and they seem to own no relatives; while Miss Manning, if ever she possessed any, has been carefully shut away from them. The position of affairs in The Towers will be strained tomorrow. The elder Fenleys are dead; one son may be in jail--or, if he isn't, might as well be--and the other, as soon as he feels his feet, will be giving himself airs. Now, haven't you a mother or an aunt who would come to Roxton and meet Miss Manning, and perhaps help her to get away from a house which is no fit place for her to live in at present?"