Explore "The Mill of Silence" by Bernard Capes on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I fully expected to be summoned as a witness to the inquest held on George White. However, as it turned out, they left me alone, and for that I was thankful, though indeed I had little to fear from any cross-examination; and Dr. Crackenthorpe would hardly have ventured under the circumstances to use his professional influence to my discomfiture, seeing that I had shown knowledge of the fact that between him and the dead man was once, at least, some species of understanding. So he gave his version of the affair, without any reference to me, who indeed could hardly in any way be held responsible for the catastrophe.
And now he lay dead, the latest victim of the inquisition of the wheel, I most fully believed; a poor wretch withered under its ban that would reach, it seemed, to agents but remotely connected with the dark history of its immediate neighbors. He was dead, and with him, I could but think, had passed my one chance of probing the direful mystery in that direction where the core of it festered.