The old man shivered. “Good God! It is awful to be waiting here to know whether Tom Melfort’s boy is to go to prison for six years or ten. I suppose there’s no chance of an acquittal.”
“None,” said the lawyer. “You see, he pled guilty. Leithen was his counsel, and I believe did his best to get him to change his mind. But the fellow was adamant.”
The young soldier, whose name was Lyson, shook his head.
“That was like Adam. There never was a more obstinate chap in his quiet way. Very easy and good-natured till you presumed just a little too much on his placidity, and then you found yourself hard up against a granite wall.”
“How well did you know him?” the lawyer asked.
“I was at school with him and we passed out of Sandhurst together. He was a friend, but not what you would call an intimate. Too clever, and a little too much of the wise youth… Oh yes, he was popular, for he was a first-class sportsman and a good fellow, but he had a bit too much professional keenness for lazy dogs like me. After that he went straight ahead, as you know, and left us all behind. Somebody told me that old Mullins said he was the most brilliant man they had had at the Staff College for a generation. He had got a European war on the brain, and spent most of his leave tramping about the Ardennes or bicycling in Lorraine.”
“If this thing hadn’t happened, what would you have said about his character?”
“Sound as the Bank of England,” was the answer. “A trifle puritanical, maybe. I used to feel that if I ever did anything mean I should be more ashamed to face Adam Melfort than any other man alive. You remember how he looked, sir,” and he turned to the old man. “Always in training— walked with a light step as if he were on the hill after deer— terribly quick off the mark in an argument—all fine and hard and tightly screwed together. The grip of his small firm hand had a sort of electric energy. Not the kind of man you would think likely to take the wrong turning.”
“I am not very clear… What exactly happened?” asked the old man.
“Common vulgar forgery,” the lawyer replied. “He altered a cheque which was made out to his wife—part of her allowance from a rich great-uncle. The facts were not in doubt, and he made no attempt to dispute them. He confessed what he had done, and explained it by a sudden madness. The funny thing was that he did not seem to be ashamed of it. He stood there quite cool and collected, with a ghost of a smile on his face, making admissions which he must have known were going to wreck him for good. You say he was wrapt up in his career, but I never saw anyone face a crash more coolly… The absence of motive puzzles me. Were the Melforts hard up? They never behaved as if they were.”
“Adam was supposed to be fairly well off. He was an only son, and his father died years ago. But I fancy his lady wife made the money fly.”
“I saw her in the witness-box,” said the lawyer. “Pretty as a picture and nicely dressed for the part. She gave her evidence in a voice like music and wept most becomingly. Even old Jenks was touched… Poor little soul! It isn’t much fun for her… Who was she, by the way? Somebody told me she was Irish.”
“She was Camilla Considine,” said Lyson. “Sort of far-away cousin of my own. Adam first met her hunting with the Meath. I haven’t seen a great deal of them lately, but I shouldn’t have said that the marriage was made in Heaven. Oh yes! She was—she is—angelically pretty, with spun-gold hair and melting blue eyes—the real fairy-tale princess type. But I never considered that she had the mind of a canary. She can’t be still, but hops from twig to twig, and her twigs were not the kind of perch that Adam fancied. They each went pretty much their own way. There was a child that died, you know, and after that there was nothing to hold them together… Adam had his regimental duties, and, when he got leave, as I have said, he was off to some strategic corner of Europe. Camilla hunted most of the winter—she rode superbly, and there were plenty of people ready to mount her—and in London she was always dancing about. You couldn’t open a picture-paper without seeing her photograph.
“No,” he continued in reply to a question, “I never heard any suggestion of scandal. Camilla lived with rather a raffish set, but she was not the kind of woman to have lovers. Not human enough. There was something curiously sexless about her. She lived for admiration and excitement, but she gave passion a miss… She and Adam had one thing in common—they were both fine-drawn and rarefied—not much clogged with fleshly appetites. But while Adam had a great brain and the devil of a purpose, Camilla was rather bird-witted—a lovely inconsequent bird. God knows how he ever came to be attracted by her! I thought the marriage absurd at the time, and, now that it has crashed, I see that it was lunacy from the start. I reckoned on disaster, but not from Adam’s side.”
“It’s the motive I can’t get at,” said the lawyer. “If, as you say, Melfort and his wife were more or less estranged, why should he risk his career, not to speak of his soul, to provide her with more money? The cheque was made out to her, remember, so she must have been privy to the business. I can imagine a doting husband playing the fool in that way, but I understand that they scarcely saw each other. He didn’t want money for himself, did he? Had he been speculating, do you suppose?”
“Not a chance of it. He had no interests outside soldiering—except that he used to read a lot… I daresay Camilla may have outrun the constable. Her clothes alone must have cost a pretty penny… No, I can’t explain it except by sudden madness, and that gets us nowhere, for it’s not the kind of madness that I ever connected with Adam Melfort. I can see him killing a man for a principle—he had always a touch of the fanatic—but cheating, never!”
The newsboys’ shouting was loud in Pall Mall. “Let’s send for the last evening paper,” said the lawyer. “It ought to have the verdict… Hullo, here’s Stannix. He may know.”
A fourth man joined the group in the corner. He was tall, with a fine head, which looked the more massive because he wore his hair longer than was the fashion. The newcomer flung himself wearily into a chair. He summoned a waiter and ordered a whisky-and-soda. His face was white and strained, as if he had been undergoing either heavy toil or heavy anxiety.
“What’s the news, Kit?” the younger soldier asked.
“I’ve just come from the court. Two years imprisonment in the second division.”
The lawyer whistled. “That’s a light sentence for forgery,” he said… But the old man, in his high dry voice, quavered, “My God! Tom Melfort’s boy!”
“Leithen handled it very well,” said the newcomer. “Made the most of his spotless record and all that sort of thing, and had a fine peroration about the sudden perversities that might overcome the best of men. You could see that Jenks was impressed. The old chap rather relishes pronouncing sentence, but in this case every word seemed to be squeezed out of him unwillingly, and he did not indulge in a single moral platitude.”
“I suppose we may say that Melfort has got off easily,” said the lawyer.
“On the contrary,” said the man called Stannix, “he has been crushed between the upper and the nether millstone.”
“But on the facts the verdict was just.”
“It was hideously unjust—but then Adam courted the injustice. He asked for it—begged for it.”
Lyson spoke. “You’re his closest friend, Kit. What in God’s name do you make of it all?”
Stannix thirstily gulped down his drink. “I wish you had seen him when he heard the sentence. You remember the quiet dreamy way he had sometimes—listening as if his thoughts were elsewhere—half- smiling—his eyes a little vacant. Well, that was how he took it. Perfectly composed—apparently quite unconscious that he was set up there for all the world to throw stones at. Think what a proud fellow he was, and then ask yourself how he managed to put his pride behind him… Mrs Melfort was sitting below, and when Jenks had finished Adam bowed to him,