Sir Richard smiled in very melancholy fashion.
“I am afraid,” he interposed, “that the presumptive evidence alone is strong enough to hang him. There is, as a matter of fact,” he went on, “only one person who could save this man’s life—that is to say if it ought to be saved—and that person is you.”
“But what can I do?” she demanded piteously. “Am I to invent a story, to pretend that I saw something when I did not?”
“Certainly not,” was the firm reply. “If you are absolutely and entirely convinced that no one else could have been in the room, that is the end of the matter.”
“But,” she faltered, “how could I tell? How could I know? How indeed could any one have seen anything? The lights all went out just at that moment, just before the flash of the revolver. If there was any moonlight, the burglar’s body hid it. It was all darkness. There may have been another person in the room, but who could see him?”
Sir Richard studied the end of his cigar meditatively. His host remained grimly silent.
“You don’t mind my asking you a few questions?” the former continued kindly. “You see, if I can get on the track of something now, it may save quite a great deal of trouble later on.”
“Of course I do not mind,” she answered, “but it seems so foolish to have to say to you the same thing all the time.”
“Well, tell me this, then. How long had you been in bed before De Besset came in to warn you and the burglar’s head appeared at the window?”
Félice reflected.
“Again I cannot be certain,” she acknowledged sorrowfully. “I believe I dozed or half slept. I know I closed my eyes and I think I must have slept.”
“When the communicating door opened, you probably saw De Besset?” Sir Richard suggested.
“I did not recognise him,” she answered. “I saw some one.”
“You could not tell, for instance, which way he was facing?”
Félice shook her head.
“Indeed I could not. I know nothing; I saw nothing.”
Sir Richard sighed—the sigh of a hypocrite.
“You were quite right, Andrew,” he said. “I can see that there is nothing to be hoped for from your wife. There will always remain curious features about the case, but the man must certainly hang.”
“No!” she screamed. “He must not hang! Not that!”
“Why not?” Sir Richard demanded swiftly.
Félice wrung her hands.
“Because I don’t believe he was guilty,” she gasped.
CHAPTER VIII
There was a moment’s breathless silence. For the first time an expression of something like dismay was visible in Andrew’s face. Félice was shaking from head to foot. Sir Richard’s expression was unchanged.
“Why not?” he asked keenly.
“Because—because the flash—that little thread of yellow light—it did not seem to come from the window at all.”
“From where, then, did it come?”
She held out her arms towards her husband. He threw his cigar away, sprang to his feet, and in a moment her head was buried against his shoulder.
“I do not know,” she sobbed. “Andrew, be kind to me. Do not let him ask me these questions.”
He smoothed her hair tenderly and looked across at his wife’s questioner with a scowl upon his face. At that moment, there was indeed something sinister about Sir Richard’s tall, thin form, the head bent slightly forward, the eyes full of enquiry.
“What can she know about it more than she has said?” Glenlitten demanded harshly. “You forget, Dick, that Félice is little more than a child; the whole thing was a terrible shock. She fainted on the spot. How can she remember anything after becoming unconscious? Why, it was enough to have sent any woman crazy.”
“Quite so,” Sir Richard assented softly. “I quite agree. The only thing is that if she had noticed anything—and she does seem to have the dawn of an idea that the flash came from somewhere else—it might have saved a man’s life.”
“Oh, bunkum!” Andrew declared. “Who could tell where a flash comes from? You don’t want to make Félice ill, do you? Chuck it now, like a good fellow! As to this man being hanged—well, they’ll have to find the revolver and prove that it belonged to him, and all sorts of things, before that could happen.”
Sir Richard sank a little deeper into his chair.
“Don’t think that I am quite a brute, either of you, please,” he begged, as he knocked the ash deliberately from his cigar. “I am sure you don’t for a moment believe that I came down here in any suspicious or unfriendly spirit. I came down really to prepare you for the time when, unless the matter is cleared up before, Lady Glenlitten will probably have to answer all the questions I have put to her, and many others besides, from the witness box.”
“What the hell do you mean?” her husband demanded.
“Why, simply this,” the lawyer explained. “The burglar, or supposed burglar—Max Drayton, his name is—is certain to be defended when the trial comes on. If he hasn’t any money himself, he is probably one of a gang, and these fellows all join together. As a matter of fact, a brother-in-law—I think it is—has already approached my office to know if I would take the case.”
“You mean that you would act for a scoundrel like that?” Andrew demanded angrily.
Sir Richard shook his head in protest.
“That point of view doesn’t exist, Andrew,” he explained. “It is the duty of every man practising in the Criminal Courts to accept any case that is offered to him which is in any way of a reasonable character. I should not accept this one until I heard Drayton’s story, but if I found that in any way convincing, I should certainly do my best to help him escape from the gallows. To get him off, I shall have to prove, or at any rate make it possible or probable, that there was some one else in the room who fired that shot. That is why I have cross-questioned Lady Glenlitten so closely, in the hope, perhaps, that her subconscious mind might yield up some little memory which was lingering in the corners of her brain.”
“If you are going to begin talking that tosh again,” Andrew began angrily?
“It isn’t tosh,” Sir Richard interrupted, speaking very quietly but with a compelling firmness. “You must try and look at this matter dispassionately, Andrew. It’s a man’s life that’s at stake, and it’s for your own sake and the sake of your wife that I speak so plainly. Both her bedroom door—the one leading out on to the corridor—and the connecting door between her apartment and yours were locked. Will not that seem a little strange to the jury, when the door leading into her boudoir and bathroom, from the corridor where the bachelor quarters are situated, from which De Besset came, was unfastened?”
Félice was sobbing now. Her head was half buried in the cushion, her eyes were covered with a few inches of cambric handkerchief.
“I don’t like Sir Richard any more, Andrew,” she cried. “Please tell him to go away.”
“Don’t be afraid, sweetheart,” he whispered. “Of course, you know, Dick,” he went on, turning round and facing his friend—a grim, passionate figure— “you know that I resent every word you are saying.”
Sir Richard shook his head sadly.