Some
of the more venturesome passers-by, who had crowded after the detectives
and Peters, could not bear to look on, and slunk away in horror.
Furneaux soon brought an emetic, which failed to act. Siddle breathed his
last while the glass was at his lips.
In that moment of crisis only three men did not lose their heads. Winter
cleared away the gapers, while Furneaux remained with the body. P.C.
Robinson came up the hill at a run, and was sent for a stretcher,
bringing from Hobbs's shop the very one on which the ill-fated Adelaide
Melhuish was carried from the river bank.
But where was Peters? In the post office, writing the first of a series
of thrilling dispatches to a London evening newspaper. What journalist
ever had a more sensational murder-case to supply "copy"? And when was
"special correspondent" ever better primed for the task? He wrote on, and
on, till the telegraphist cried halt. Then he hied him to London by
train, and began the more ambitious "story" for next morning. What he did
not know he guessed correctly. A fagged but triumphant man was Jimmie
Peters when he "blew in" to the Savage Club at 1 A.M. to seek sustenance
and a whiskey and soda before going home.
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