“The second part of my story explains that,” he announced. “How to dispose of the necklace—it bothered me! I came up against a man who called himself a private detective—Felix Main. He agreed to help me dispose of the jewels and divide the spoils. He also undertook to arrange things so that I should never be suspected of the murder, and it was he who procured, through a man whom he had once helped, the revolver belonging to Drayton’s brother-in-law. We threw it into the wood near the spot where Drayton had left his car, knowing that some day or other it would be found.”
“Stop a moment!” Sir Richard interrupted, taking some paper from a rack. “Hadn’t I better take this down?”
“Wait till I have finished,” Charles insisted. “You shall take it down presently. I was going to write it myself at a café. It is better for you to do it. I went to Felix Main to-day for money. I found he had double-crossed me. He had decided the game was too dangerous. He had taken the necklace to Scotland Yard and claimed the reward. He mocked at me when I demanded my share. He intended to have the whole. He reminded me that a word from him, and I should be charged with the murder. It was blackmail—flagrant and brutal. I took him up in my arms—I am strong sometimes; he had a gun but he was too frightened to use it properly. I shook the life out of him, and there he lies in his office.”
“My God!” Sir Richard cried. “Do you mean that you killed him?”
“Twenty minutes ago,” the young man assented, with a strange flash in his eyes, “and if ever a living being deserved it, he did. Now then, on to paper with it, Sir Richard. I am trusting you, mind, because there is no chance of my escape, with these two things up against me, but when I’ve signed, I walk out of this room. I will not have a policeman’s hand upon my shoulder. I choose my own punishment.”
The lawyer sat down at the table and began to write. Charles rang the bell and coolly ordered another brandy and soda, which he consumed in hasty gulps. Presently Sir Richard, his task completed, leaned back in his chair, and in his dull, legal voice read what he had written. The young man nodded assent, snatched up a pen and signed his name. Sir Richard and Haslam signed as witnesses, and the former placed the paper in his pocket.
“Now what are you going to do?” he asked Charles.
The latter stood up and looked out into the street. “If I can get so far,” he confided, “I am going to a little café near here where I shall drink. When the time comes, I shall know what to do. You need not interfere,” he warned them. “No one else shall suffer, only I am going my own way.”
The two men exchanged glances.
“In the light of what you have confessed, Charles Protinoff—” the lawyer began.
“Don’t be a fool,” the young man interrupted. “I have half a dozen cartridges in my automatic now, and I am strong enough to crush you both to death if I felt like it. Die I must, I know, but I shall die my own way.”
They were both men of presence of mind, of courage and enterprise, and yet he left them standing there and departed, slamming the door behind him. On the steps of the club, however, he stopped short. His taxicab was still waiting at the kerb, but a very official-looking and alert man in plain clothes was standing by its side. Two policemen were crossing the street; another, who had been talking to the commissionaire, left him and approached. Charles’s hand flashed from his pocket, there were two sharp reports, and he collapsed upon the pavement. As he fell, he threw the pistol to Sir Richard, who had rushed out.
“I killed De Besset with that,” he confessed falteringly. “I regret—”
* * * * *
Once more the same decrepit taxicab rumbled along the stately avenue of Glenlitten Hall. Notwithstanding previous warnings, the driver again pulled up before the great main entrance, and in due course a woman descended—a woman who looked as though she had slept in her clothes in a bedchamber peopled with horrible dreams. Lily Drayton—“Lil” to her intimates—had forgotten all about cosmetics. Nothing remained of her showy looks but her eyes, still, notwithstanding their terrified light, large and beautiful.
“I must see Lady Glenlitten,” she begged of Parkins, who had opened the door.
He looked at her sympathetically, but there was a certain mild reproach in his tone.
“Her ladyship only motored down from London last night, and it is barely ten o’clock, madame.”
“Her ladyship saw me last time I came,” the woman reminded him. “She promised she would see me at any time. I’ve been up nearly all night and I’ve driven over from Winchester this morning. You must tell her ladyship, please.”
Parkins ushered her into a sitting room. He was a kindly person, and he felt somehow in touch with the full drama of life when he saw, for the second time, the pitiable condition of this woman whose husband, as the whole household knew full well, was lying in Winchester Jail under the shadow of a terrible death.
“You would like some coffee?” he asked.
“Nothing at all, thank you,” she said. “Just her ladyship, please—as soon as she can see me. I must speak to her. I can think of nothing else.”
“Her ladyship is down, I believe,” Parkins confided. “I will let her know that you are here.”
He departed, and the woman walked restlessly up and down the room. The agony of that last quarter of an hour’s interview with her panic-stricken husband was still tearing at her heart strings. Presently Félice came in.
“Mrs. Drayton!” she exclaimed. “I am so glad that you are here. Won’t you please sit down?”
The woman was almost beside herself. She stood in the middle of the room, shaking from head to foot—dumb horror burning in her eyes.
“My lady,” she cried, “I cannot sit down, I cannot sleep, I cannot eat, I cannot drink. This morning I was allowed to see Max. They told him yesterday that the day of Assizes is fixed. He will be tried for murder—the sixth of next month. Sir Richard has no more news for him. They all think at the jail —I can tell by their manner and so can he—that he’s in for it. My lady, he’s crazy. He never did it. You know he didn’t do it, but you haven’t said a word—nothing has happened, and the days go on.”
“Please stop!” Félice begged. “Stop and I will tell you something.”
“But I can’t stop until I ask you this,” the woman continued, her voice rising almost to an hysterical shriek. “This I must know—this Max must know— every one must know. You do know that it wasn’t Max. It may have been some one dear to you, it may have been some one who should not have been in your room, you may have to suffer for telling the truth, but you wouldn’t let an innocent man hang? Oh, my lady there’s something in your face which tells me you wouldn’t do that. Give me a message for Max. He knows that only you can save him, and he’ll die if I don’t give him some hope.”
Félice leaned over and held the woman by the shoulders.
“Now please listen,” she insisted. “Your husband will be proved innocent. You hear that? Innocent! Don’t work yourself up like this. Sit down.”
The woman collapsed into a chair. She sat with her eyes fastened upon Félice, moistening her hard, withered lips with her tongue.
“A very terrible thing has happened,” Félice confided, “and yet perhaps it is for the best. It was the young Russian who claimed to be my brother who stole the necklace and killed the Comte de Besset. He has confessed and shot himself. Now listen, Mrs. Drayton. Bear up, if you please, and listen. There is no more question of your husband being concerned in the murder. That is finished. You can go and tell him so. Charles Protinoff, or De Suess, as he called himself then—a guest who had dined in the house— killed the Comte de Besset, because he interfered when he was trying to steal my necklace. He has confessed. Sir Richard Cotton has his signed confession. You are listening carefully? Your husband will