Robert followed him, and waited at
the corner of the street. The tidings brought by the cabman were
of the most unexpected kind. The murderer--I can write of him by
no other name--had fallen ill on the very night when he was
driven to the Red Lion, had taken to his bed there and then, and
was still confined to it at that very moment. His disease was of
a kind that is brought on by excessive drinking, and that affects
the mind as well as the body. The people at the public house call
it the Horrors.
Hearing these things, Robert determined to see if he could not
find out something more for himself by going and inquiring at the
public house, in the character of one of the friends of the sick
man in bed upstairs. He made two important discoveries. First, he
found out the name and address of the doctor in attendance.
Secondly, he entrapped the barman into mentioning the murderous
wretch by his name. This last discovery adds an unspeakably
fearful interest to the dreadful misfortune of Mary's death. Noah
Truscott, as she told me herself in the last conversation I ever
had with her, was the name of the man whose drunken example
ruined her father, and Noah Truscott is also the name of the man
whose drunken fury killed her. There is something that makes one
shudder, something supernatural in this awful fact.
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