The Brute

An Indignant Tale

Dodging in from the rain-swept street, I exchanged a smile and a
glance with Miss Blank in the bar of the Three Crows. This exchange was
effected with extreme propriety. It is a shock to think that, if still
alive, Miss Blank must be something over sixty now. How time passes!

Noticing my gaze directed inquiringly at the partition of glass and
varnished wood, Miss Blank was good enough to say, encouragingly:

"Only Mr. Jermyn and Mr. Stonor in the parlour with another gentleman
I've never seen before."

I moved towards the parlour door. A voice discoursing on the other side
(it was but a matchboard partition), rose so loudly that the concluding
words became quite plain in all their atrocity.

"That fellow Wilmot fairly dashed her brains out, and a good job, too!"

This inhuman sentiment, since there was nothing profane or improper
in it, failed to do as much as to check the slight yawn Miss Blank
was achieving behind her hand. And she remained gazing fixedly at the
window-panes, which streamed with rain.

As I opened the parlour door the same voice went on in the same cruel
strain:

"I was glad when I heard she got the knock from somebody at last. Sorry
enough for poor Wilmot, though. That man and I used to be chums at one
time. Of course that was the end of him. A clear case if there ever was
one. No way out of it. None at all."

The voice belonged to the gentleman Miss Blank had never seen before. He
straddled his long legs on the hearthrug. Jermyn, leaning forward,
held his pocket-handkerchief spread out before the grate. He looked back
dismally over his shoulder, and as I slipped behind one of the
little wooden tables, I nodded to him. On the other side of the fire,
imposingly calm and large, sat Mr. Stonor, jammed tight into a capacious
Windsor armchair. There was nothing small about him but his short, white
side-whiskers. Yards and yards of extra superfine blue cloth (made up
into an overcoat) reposed on a chair by his side. And he must just have
brought some liner from sea, because another chair was smothered under
his black waterproof, ample as a pall, and made of three-fold oiled
silk, double-stitched throughout. A man's hand-bag of the usual size
looked like a child's toy on the floor near his feet.

I did not nod to him. He was too big to be nodded to in that parlour.
He was a senior Trinity pilot and condescended to take his turn in the
cutter only during the summer months. He had been many times in charge
of royal yachts in and out of Port Victoria. Besides, it's no use
nodding to a monument. And he was like one. He didn't speak, he didn't
budge. He just sat there, holding his handsome old head up,