"
"Is that the real reason of your pious alarms?" asked Wilson, with a
slight sneer.
The Irishman's pale face blackened with a new passion.
"I have faced as many murderers in County Clare as you ever fought
with in Clapham Junction, Mr. Cockney," he said.
"Hush, please," said Morton, sharply. "Wilson, you have no kind of
right to imply doubt of your superior's conduct. I hope you will
prove yourself as courageous and trustworthy as he has always been."
The pale face of the red-haired man seemed a shade paler, but he was
silent and composed, and Sir Walter went up to Nolan with marked
courtesy, saying, "Shall we go outside now, and get this business
done?"
Dawn had lifted, leaving a wide chasm of white between a great gray
cloud and the great gray moorland, beyond which the tower was
outlined against the daybreak and the sea.
Something in its plain and primitive shape vaguely suggested the
dawn in the first days of the earth, in some prehistoric time when
even the colors were hardly created, when there was only blank
daylight between cloud and clay. These dead hues were relieved only
by one spot of gold--the spark of the candle alight in the window
of the lonely tower, and burning on into the broadening daylight. As
the group of detectives, followed by a cordon of policemen, spread
out into a crescent to cut off all escape, the light in the tower
flashed as if it were moved for a moment, and then went out.
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