your folly till your dying day!"

"To Hell with you," cried Sir Anthony.

The door slammed. We were left alone. An avalanche of silence
overwhelmed us. Heaven knows how long we remained speechless and
motionless--I in my wheel-chair, he standing on the hearthrug staring
awfully in front of him. At last he drew a deep breath and threw up his
arms and flung himself down on a leather-covered couch, where he sat,
elbows on knees and his head in his hands. After a while he lifted a
drawn face.

"It's true, Duncan," said he, "and you know it."

"I don't know it," I replied stoutly, "any more than you do."

He rose in his nervous way and came swiftly to me and clapped both his
hands on my frail shoulders and bent over me--he was a little man, as I
have told you--and put his face so close to mine that I could feel his
breath on my cheek.

"Upon your soul as a Christian you know that man wasn't lying."

I looked into his eyes--about six inches from mine.

"Boyce never murdered Althea," I said.

"But he is the man--the man I've been looking for."

I pushed him away with both hands, using all my strength. It was too
horrible.

"Suppose he is. What then?"

He fell back a pace or two. "Once I remember saying: 'If ever I get
hold of that man--God help him!'"

He clenched his fists and started to pace up and down the library,
passing and repassing my chair. At last my nerves could stand it no
longer and I called on him to halt.

"Gedge's story is curiously incomplete," said I. "We ought to have
crossexamined him more closely. Is it likely that Boyce should have
gone off leaving behind him a witness of his crime whom he had
threatened to murder, and who he must have known would have given
information as soon as the death was discovered? And don't you think
Gedge's reason for holding his tongue very unconvincing? His fool
hatred of our class, instead of keeping him cynically indifferent,
would have made him lodge information at once and gloat over our
discomfiture."

I could not choose but come to the defence of the unhappy man whom I
had learned to call my friend, although, for all my trying, I could
conjure up no doubt as to his intimate relation with the tragedy. As
Sir Anthony did not speak, I went on.

"You can't judge a man with Leonard Boyce's record on the EX PARTE
statement of a malevolent beast like Gedge. Look back. If there had
been any affair between Althea and Boyce, the merest foolish
flirtation, ev