The Cloister and the Hearth by Charles Reade (most interesting books to read .TXT) 📕

of the landlord driven in bleeding from a dozen scratches inflicted by the bones of his own victims, and carrying his horrible collar. But Denys came panting after, and in a few fiery words soon made all clear.

“Bind him like the rest,” said the alderman sternly. “I count him the blackest of them all.”

While his hands were being bound, the poor wretch begged piteously that “the skull might be taken from him.”

“Humph!” said the alderman. “Certes I had not ordered such a thing to be put on mortal man. Yet being there, I will not lift voice nor finger to doff it. Methinks it fits thee truly, thou bloody dog. 'Tis thy ensign, and hangs well above a heart so foul as thine.”

He then inquired of Denys if he thought they had secured the whole gang, or but a part.

“Your worship,” said Denys, “there are but seven of them, and this landlord. One we slew upstairs, one we trundled down dead, the rest are bound before you.”

“Good! go fetch the dead one from upstairs, and lay him beside him I caused to be removed.”

Here a voice like a guinea-fowl's broke peevishly in. “Now, now, now, where is the hand? that is what I want to see.” The speaker was a little pettifogging clerk.

“You will find it above, nailed to the door-post by a crossbow bolt.”

“Good!” said the clerk. He whispered his master, “What a goodly show will the 'pieces de conviction' make!” and with this he wrote them down, enumerating them in separate squeaks as he penned them. Skulls—Bones—A woman's hair—A thief's hands 1 axe—2 carcasses—1 crossbow bolt. This done, he itched to search the cellar himself: there might be other invaluable morsels of evidence, an ear, or even an earring. The alderman assenting, he caught up a torch and was hurrying thither, when an accident stopped him, and indeed carried him a step or two in the opposite direction.

The constables had gone up the stair in single file.

But the head constable no sooner saw the phosphorescent corpse seated by the bedside, than he stood stupefied; and next he began to shake like one in an ague, and, terror gaining on him more and more, he uttered a sort of howl and recoiled swiftly. Forgetting the steps in his recoil, he tumbled over backward on his nearest companion; but he, shaken by the shout of dismay, and catching a glimpse of something horrid, was already staggering back, and in no condition to sustain the head constable, who, like most head constables, was a ponderous man. The two carried away the third, and the three the fourth, and they streamed into the kitchen, and settled on the floor, overlapping each other like a sequence laid out on a card-table. The clerk coming hastily with his torch ran an involuntary tilt against the fourth man, who, sharing the momentum of the mass, knocked him instantly on his back, the ace of that fair quint; and there he lay kicking and waving his torch, apparently in triumph, but really in convulsion, sense and wind being driven out together by the concussion.

“What is to do now, in Heaven's name?” cried the alderman, starting up with considerable alarm. But Denys explained, and offered to accompany his worship. “So be it,” said the latter. His men picked themselves ruefully up, and the alderman put himself at their head and examined the premises above and below. As for the prisoners, their interrogatory was postponed till they could be confronted with the servant.

Before dawn, the thieves, alive and dead, and all the relics and evidences of crime and retribution, were swept away into the law's net, and the inn was silent and almost deserted. There remained but one constable, and Denys and Gerard, the latter still sleeping heavily.