Abroad with the Jimmies
[Illustration: _Lilian Bell_ Duogravure From the Painting by Oliver Dennett Grover] Abroad with the Jimmies BY LILIAN BELL,
"Doan't seem like ut, zur, do ut? Ur must, an' ur mustn't, an' yit again
ur must. Powerful 'ard place ur be to maake in a starm, to be zure,
Lundy. Zaid the Lord 'ould dezide. But ur 'ouldn't be warned, ur
'ouldn't; an' voolhardy volk, as the zayin' is, must go their own
voolhardy waay to perdition!"
It was the last I saw of Le Geyt alive. Next morning the lifeless body
of "the man who was wanted for the Campden Hill mystery" was cast up by
the waves on the shore of Lundy. The Lord had decided.
Hugo had not miscalculated. "Luck in their suicides," Hilda Wade said;
and, strange to say, the luck of the Le Geyts stood him in good
stead still. By a miracle of fate, his children were not branded as
a murderer's daughters. Sebastian gave evidence at the inquest on the
wife's body: "Self-inflicted--a recoil--accidental--I am SURE of it."
His specialist knowledge--his assertive certainty, combined with that
arrogant, masterful manner of his, and his keen, eagle eye, overbore the
jury. Awed by the great man's look, they brought in a submissive
verdict of "Death by misadventure." The coroner thought it a most proper
finding. Mrs. Mallet had made the most of the innate Le Geyt horror
of blood. The newspapers charitably surmised that the unhappy husband,
crazed by the instantaneous unexpectedness of his loss, had wandered
away like a madman to the scenes of his childhood, and had there been
drowned by accident while trying to cross a stormy sea to Lundy, under
some wild impression that he would find his dead wife alive on the
[Illustration: _Lilian Bell_ Duogravure From the Painting by Oliver Dennett Grover] Abroad with the Jimmies BY LILIAN BELL,