“Johnson was a good fellow,” Manfield went on; “fought in the war, popular everywhere, and there were some very ugly rumours about the man he killed.”
“This is England, not France,” Sir Richard reminded them calmly. “If a man commits a murder here, and I am for the Crown, it’s my duty to have him found guilty, whatever the provocation may have been. It may not be justice perhaps, sometimes, but the bases of the law are sound. Here and there one poor fellow must suffer that a great principle may remain.”
“Nevertheless,” Manfield insisted. “I say that the case of Johnson is one more nail in the coffin of this rigid administration of exact laws. It is circumstances, not actual deeds, which decide guilt.”
“In West Africa,” Haslam put in, “we are compelled often to abandon statutes altogether in dealing with the natives. Every now and then, the good man kills the black sheep who richly deserves it. I won’t say that we pat the good man on the back, but we don’t hang him.”
“In an uncivilised country,” Sir Richard remarked, “you naturally have more latitude. Here, where every man and woman can read the newspapers and understands the code of the laws, justice must be differently administered.”
“I am afraid, Sir Richard,” Félice murmured, “that you are a very cruel man.”
He smiled.
“I try to fancy myself a just one.”
She looked at his straight, firm mouth, the legal type, without twitch or droop, the lean, clean-shaven face, and the clear, grey eyes.
“I think if I had done wrong,” she confided, “I would not like it to be you who tried to convince the jury that I must be punished.”
He smiled at her once more with the tolerance one shows to a child.
“Lady Glenlitten,” he assured her, “I should refuse the brief. I should plunge myself into the fray on the other side.”
“Now you are becoming more human,” she conceded. “I like people who say nice things to me, and what you have said just now is chivalrous.”
“Don’t you trust him, Lady Glenlitten,” Manfield advised her. “He’s as hard as a flint. You should have heard how merciless he was about that poor fellow Johnson, who was hung last week. Dash it all, if a man commits suicide, you allow him a verdict of ‘Suicide during temporary insanity’, by which you clear him of guilt; why shouldn’t murder sometimes be committed in a fit of ‘temporary insanity’?”
“It very often is,” Sir Richard acknowledged. “There are a great many men who habitually lose their temper, who might be considered technically at times to be in a state of temporary insanity. On the other hand, you couldn’t frame laws to meet such a condition.”
“I wish some one would tell me,” Grindells observed, “why crime and everything to do with crime^ has such a fascination for people nowadays. Every one seems to be dabbling in criminology. I was junior in the Hassell case a short time ago, and I should think I had a hundred applications from well-known people to try to get them into Court.” Sir Richard nodded.
“My office is sometimes besieged.”
“I wonder what it would feel like to commit a real crime,” Félice reflected. “I think sometimes it must be very difficult, if one hates any one very much and knows that they go about doing evil, to keep from it if the opportunity comes.”
“There were some very interesting statistics published the other day,” Glenlitten remarked from the other end of the table. “Taking the three supposedly most civilised countries, the estimate was that seventy-five per cent. of the murders in the world were committed for the sake of, or on account of, a woman, twenty per cent. for financial reasons, including robberies, and the remainder for no particular cause.”
“I,” Prince Charles intervened, “have seen such murders—murders committed for no particular cause. I have seen many of them. I have seen men start by killing people because they believed they were political enemies, and then I have seen them go mad and rush about killing any one, killing just for the sake of killing. I have seen the blood fever. It is a terrible thing.”
Félice shivered a little. Her husband promptly interposed—
“Too much of this talk about crime,” he declared cheerfully. “Dick, did you start talking shop?”
“Not I,” was the prompt reply. “When I come out for a holiday I like to believe in my fellow creatures.”
“If you had the misfortune,” Prince Charles said gloomily, joining once more in the conversation, “to be of my nationality, crime as a subject would not appeal to you. Fortunately for our hostess,” he added, with a little bow towards Félice, “she was too young for those horrors, but for myself I saw things, when I was young loo—barely seventeen—of which I could not speak, to think of which, even now, makes me shudder.”
They looked at him with curiosity. Félice was gazing steadily down the table towards the opposite wall. She had the appearance of one trying to close her senses, to hear nothing of that still, expressionless voice.
“You were in Russia during the revolution?” Glenlitten asked.
“I was training to be a soldier,” the Prince replied. “Many of my relatives were murdered, our estates were seized, the escape of my family was a miracle of which we do not even now dare to speak. Still, none of us will forget; it would be impossible.”
There was a moment’s silence. Every one was interested in the tall, young figure with the cold, grey eyes, seated upright at the table, head and shoulders taller than his neighbours. Suddenly came an interruption from outside. There was a low rumble, and the windows shook. Félice started.
“What’s that?” some one exclaimed.
“Thunder,” Glenlitten groaned. “I was rather afraid of it.”
Félice rose to her feet. The moment had arrived.
“I do not like thunder,” she confessed, a little tremulously. “Lady Manfield, do you wish to come, yes? Lady Susan?”
“Susan, my dear,” her sister-in-law corrected her. “Of course I am ready—and thunder never hurt anybody. Not even the lightning can touch this house: I am sometimes angry with Andrew, he has so many of those hideous conductors nestling around the chimneys.”
The women passed out, gossiping together. Prince Charles, from his place amongst the little semicircle of men who had risen to their feet, held up his glass.
“I shall give you a Russian toast,” he said, “but I shall translate it into English. It is—‘May this house be always free from wind and storm and evil that comes from men.’”
CHAPTER II
The silence of the room, the state bedchamber of the chatelaine of Glenlitten, seemed indeed to be a part of its exceeding charm, unportentous of the gathering storm. Yet there was about it, an hour or so later, a suggestion of recent haste: a tangle of exquisite silks and lingerie lay in disorder upon a deep armchair, with one daintily shaped silk stocking hanging over the arm. Upon the dressing table were scattered a variety of jewels—a diamond necklace whose gems sparkled brilliantly even in the dim rose-tinted illumination of the shaded light which stood by the bedside, a medley of rings with great lustrous stones, lying here and there as though they had been torn from the fingers with the same passionate haste as the little filmy wilderness of zephyrlike clothing from the body. The single bed, with its gilt posts and Cupids, lay cool and empty, the pink sheets turned down, the lace-edged pillow invitingly soft and luxurious. Even the Watteau shepherdesses upon the silk-panelled walls seemed to have paused in their gambollings