killed your son?”
“God knows! God knows!” sobbed the old woman, “but you—”
“Mrs. Bolton, you are raving,” said Hope hastily, and strove to raise her from the floor. “Let Miss Kendal take you away. And you go, Lucy: this sight is too terrible for your eyes.”
Lucy, inarticulate with nervous fear, nodded and tottered towards the door of the museum; but Widow Anne refused to be lifted to her feet.
“My boy is dead,” she wailed; “my boy Sid is a corp as I saw him in my dream. In the coffin, too, cut to pieces—”
“Rubbish! rubbish!” interrupted Braddock, peering into the depths of the packing case. “I can see no wound.”
Mrs. Bolton leaped to her feet with an agility surprising in so aged a woman. “Let me find the wound,” she screamed, throwing herself forward.
Hope caught her back and forced her towards the door. “No! The body must not be disturbed until the police see it,” he said firmly.
“The police—ah, yes, the police,” remarked Braddock quickly, “we must send for the police to Pierside and tell them my mummy has been stolen.”
“That my boy has been murdered,” screeched Widow Anne, waving her skinny arms, and striving to break from Archie. “You wicked old devil to kill my darling Sid. If he hadn't gone to them furren parts he wouldn't be a corp now. But I'll have the lawr: you'll be hanged, you—you—”
Braddock lost his patience under this torrent of unjust accusations and rushed towards Mrs. Bolton, dragging Cockatoo by the arm. In less time than it takes to tell, he had swept both Archie and the widow out into the hall, where Lucy was trembling, and Cockatoo, by his master's order, was locking the door.
“Not a thing shall be touched until the police come. Hope, you are, a witness that I have not meddled with the dead: you were present when I opened the packing case: you have seen that a useless body has been substituted for a valuable mummy. And yet this old witch dares—dares—” Braddock stamped and grew incoherent from sheer rage.
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