LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1365, 1 July 1878, Page 3

LITERATURE.

.MARINE BINOCULAR. ( Concluded.) I had finished painting him by this time, and was rubbing the lenses of my large binocular with some white tisi-ue paper. * I understand, sir, said the detective. * I understand. and you will take your glasses wdth you to pass the lonesome time in the other room.’ ‘ Yes, I intend taking the glasses.’ ‘Well, I think we’ll get him now.’ Hav'ng made Bracken throw over him a large loose cloak, and substitute for his own silk hat a soft broad-brimmed one of mine, we set out and soon gained those rooms. Bracken went immediately into the inner one, and I took up my position at the window of the other. Here with my glasses I could see all the windows that commanded the room where the old man had hid his board and met his death. For an hour I kept the binocular fixed upon one window at a considerable distance. This is what my glasses disclosed to me : 1 uring the eirli r portion of Bracken’s pantomime, almost as soon as he had entered the room, the figure of a man appeared at one of the highest windows within range. Ho had not looked many minutes when he sprang back and threw up his arras like one struck by a bullet. I could now see his face distinctly, for he stood fully ju the light of his lamp and a little behind it. A 1 though the distance was considerable, the expression was revealed, Presently he left the light and returned in a few seconds with some slender thing in his hand. Standing well hack in his room, so that only his head appeared above the window-sill, he pointed this long thing—a telescope—towards the next room. Toen I knocked on the floor and in a brief space saw the telescope fall and hishead disappeared. Bracken rejoined me, ami we returned to the Inn. I now had no doubt as to the identity of the murderer, but I resolved upon applying a final test. I communicated my discovery and my intention to Bracken. He approved of the latter, and we arranged to put it to the teat on the second night from the one of the pantomime. At the appointed time the detective came He again assumed the dress and wig, and I applied the colour to his face ; then with the cloak and hat worn on the night he was ready, with this addition that he had at my suggestion provided himself with a piece of wood and cord fashioned into a likeness of the instrument used in strangling the old man.

This night, instead of turning down the street at the hack of the Inn, we kept on to the right for about three hundred yards. The ground mse slightly as. we went. We stopped at the door of a lofty building on the right-hand side. Telling Bracken to keep his bank to the door, 1 rang loudly. In a few inmutes the door was opened by a low-sized man. He had remarkably long, powerful arms, His head was so much thrust forward that one could not see his

full face. A round hump stood between his shoulder-blades, explaining the peculiar carriage of the head. What could be seen of his face was thin and yellow, and in no way tended to counterbalance the defects of his figure. The moment the door was fully opened I stepped in, saying : ‘ I have come to see those rooms now. Can you show them to me?—you remember, I was here to-day, and you said you required an order from the agent, This is the ord-r. I told you ,1 should not be able to come until about midnight,’ He took the order, and read it by the light of the candle he carried. ‘ It’s a most unreasonable time to come looking at rooms,’ he answered sulkily, ‘ but you can see them. You want to see ail on the top floor! ’ ‘Yea.’

He closed the door, and I followed him down the spacious hall until we got to the foot of the stairs. Then I stopped sud denly and asked, < Will you al'ow a“man who is with me to stand in while we go up ? ’ He gave a grumbling assent, and began slowly and ill-humouredly going upstairs I want to the door, admitted Bracken, and telling him to take a seat followed my conductor. The house was one of those enormous structures lately raised in the Holborn district. No one slept in it but this man, the caretaker. It was intended for offices, and many of the lower rooms had already been let. But the highest floor, the sixth, was still idle, and thither we were now going. When we gained the summit, I began my inspection. I we,lked deliberately through all the rooms, but did not pause in any of them- In the back there were five rooms, all of similar size. As we went through these I paused frequently and looked out of the windows. It was a clear bright night. When we came to the last door ho paused and said:—

‘ That’s my room. That’s where I sleep. You do not want to see that. It’s exactly the same as the others.’

‘ 1 should like to see that room,’ I answered.

With elaborate reluctance he opened the door. I crossed the threshold and closed the door after me,

It was a square, white room, having one large window without blind or curtain. The furniture consisted of three old wooden chairs, an iron bedstead, a small square deal table, and a little press. On the chimney-piece were a tobacco jar, a match-box, and a piece of looking-glass, a candlestick, a telescope which hud seen much service, and a hammer. A lamp burned on the table. To the undisguised annoyance and surprise of (.lie hunchback, 1 look a seat, observing that it was a long way up. liis astonishment deprived him of the power of speech. Alter a little while he moved to the side oi' the bed, sat down with a sigh, and uttered in a tone of overtaxed patience the monosyllable ‘ Well! ’ Then he blow out the candle and resumed his stare.

‘There’s a good view from this window in tlie day time P ’ I asked.

‘ You cun see a bit.’ ‘ And a good view at night ? ’ ‘ Y ou can't sea much in the dark.’ ‘Ola! yes, you can, if there’s light at the other end of the darkness, you know.’ ‘ Eh! ’ he cried, drawing himself up, and looking straight info my face with an expression of hatred paralysed by fear. ‘ I was raying,’ i oareleunly repeated, ‘that one can sec a good distance through the dark,

provided there is a light at the other end of the darkness.'

‘What has that to do with you taking room hero ? ’ There was a dangerous glare in in his eyes, and I thought I saw them fasten for a moment on the hammer, and I know he clenched his right hand fierce);. * Not much,’ again carelessly, as I rose and went towards the window. He never moved anything but his eyes; I could feel them clinging to me like a wind. I went on, as I looked into the night:—‘ Why, I can see a great deal, although it is night. What strange things a man could see here with a glass ! 1 I turned round and looked at the telescope on the mantel-piece. His eyes fled from me to the hammer. I crossed the room and returned to the window with the glass. I raised it and pointed it down. As I did so, I heard him stealthily cross the floor and saw him seize the hammer. Then he came close to me, holding the weapon in his right hand behind him. ‘ What can you see ? ’ lie whispered, half in fury, half in terror. Keeping my eye upon him, although affecting to follow the direction of the tube, I continued, ‘I can see into several rooms of houses down there.’ He retreated a pace, brought his right hand in front, settled his fingers on the handle, and then drew them round it with such force that the fingers grew deadly white. ‘Well,’ he whispered. I went on, *Ha ! what have I now ? An old man, a miser evidently, sitting on the floor of a mean room. The board is raised He is looking into the hole and running gold through his fingers.’ A loud noise made me turn around. The hammer had fallen from his nerveless hand, his mouth was wide open, and his dilated eyes were glaring at me out of his yellow terrorstricken face.

‘ Is it there again to-night ? ’ ‘ Take the glass and look,’ I whispered, at the same moment tapping the floor with my foot.

He caught the telescope in his palsied hands, and, after ineffectual attempts to fix it, let it fall with a whine of agony, whispering, ‘ I. can’t see it to night, but 1 did the other night.’ As he staggered across the floor, he uttered a hideous yell of despair, and fell to the ground insensible. He had seen the counterfeit of the old man standing at the open door holding out to him the instrument by which he had effected his crime. Eicttaud Dowling-