"Le Geyt is not a coward," I interposed, with warmth.

"No, not, a coward--a manly spirited, great-hearted gentleman--but still, not quite of the bravest type. He lacks one element. The Le Geyts have physical courage--enough and to spare--but their moral courage fails them at a pinch. They rush into suicide or its equivalent at critical moments, out of pure boyish impulsiveness."

A few minutes later, Mrs. Mallet came in. She was not broken down--on the contrary, she was calm--stoically, tragically, pitiably calm; with that ghastly calmness which is more terrible by far than the most demonstrative grief. Her face, though deadly white, did not move a muscle. Not a tear was in her eyes. Even her bloodless hands hardly twitched at the folds of her hastily a.s.sumed black gown. She clenched them after a minute when she had grasped mine silently; I could see that the nails dug deep into the palms in her painful resolve to keep herself from collapsing.

Hilda Wade, with infinite sisterly tenderness, led her over to a chair by the window in the summer twilight, and took one quivering hand in hers. "I have been telling Dr. c.u.mberledge, Lina, about what I most fear for your dear brother, darling; and... I think... he agrees with me."

Mrs. Mallet turned to me, with hollow eyes, still preserving her tragic calm. "I am afraid of it, too," she said, her drawn lips tremulous. "Dr.

c.u.mberledge, we must get him back! We must induce him to face it!"

"And yet," I answered, slowly, turning it over in my own mind; "he has run away at first. Why should he do that if he means--to commit suicide?" I hated to utter the words before that broken soul; but there was no way out of it.

Hilda interrupted me with a quiet suggestion. "How do you know he has run away?" she asked. "Are you not taking it for granted that, if he meant suicide, he would blow his brains out in his own house? But surely that would not be the Le Geyt way. They are gentle-natured folk; they would never blow their brains out or cut their throats. For all we know, he may have made straight for Waterloo Bridge,"--she framed her lips to the unspoken words, unseen by Mrs. Mallet,--"like his uncle Alfred."

"That is true," I answered, lip-reading. "I never thought of that either."

"Still, I do not attach importance to this idea," she went on. "I have some reason for thinking he has run away... elsewhere; and if so, our first task must be to entice him back again."

"What are your reasons?" I asked, humbly. Whatever they might be, I knew enough of Hilda Wade by this time to know that she had probably good grounds for accepting them.

"Oh, they may wait for the present," she answered. "Other things are more pressing. First, let Lina tell us what she thinks of most moment."

Mrs. Mallet braced herself up visibly to a distressing effort. "You have seen the body, Dr. c.u.mberledge?" she faltered.

"No, dear Mrs. Mallet, I have not. I came straight from Nathaniel's. I have had no time to see it."

"Dr. Sebastian has viewed it by my wish--he has been so kind--and he will be present as representing the family at the post-mortem. He notes that the wound was inflicted with a dagger--a small ornamental Norwegian dagger, which always lay, as I know, on the little what-not by the blue sofa."

I nodded a.s.sent. "Exactly; I have seen it there."

"It was blunt and rusty--a mere toy knife--not at all the sort of weapon a man would make use of who designed to commit a deliberate murder. The crime, if there WAS a crime (which we do not admit), must therefore have been wholly unpremeditated."

I bowed my head. "For us who knew Hugo that goes without saying."

She leaned forward eagerly. "Dr. Sebastian has pointed out to me a line of defence which would probably succeed--if we could only induce poor Hugo to adopt it. He has examined the blade and scabbard, and finds that the dagger fits its sheath very tight, so that it can only be withdrawn with considerable violence. The blade sticks." (I nodded again.) "It needs a hard pull to wrench it out.... He has also inspected the wound, and a.s.sures me its character is such that it MIGHT have been self-inflicted." She paused now and again, and brought out her words with difficulty. "Self-inflicted, he suggests; therefore, that THIS may have happened. It is admitted--WILL be admitted--the servants overheard it--we can make no reservation there--a difference of opinion, an altercation, even, took place between Hugo and Clara that evening"--she started suddenly--"why, it was only last night--it seems like ages--an altercation about the children's schooling. Clara held strong views on the subject of the children"--her eyes blinked hard--"which Hugo did not share. We throw out the hint, then, that Clara, during the course of the dispute--we must call it a dispute--accidentally took up this dagger and toyed with it. You know her habit of toying, when she had no knitting or needlework. In the course of playing with it (we suggest) she tried to pull the knife out of its sheath; failed; held it up, so, point upward; pulled again; pulled harder--with a jerk, at last the sheath came off; the dagger sprang up; it wounded Clara fatally. Hugo, knowing that they had disagreed, knowing that the servants had heard, and seeing her fall suddenly dead before him, was seized with horror--the Le Geyt impulsiveness!--lost his head; rushed out; fancied the accident would be mistaken for murder. But why? A Q.C., don't you know! Recently married!

Most attached to his wife. It is plausible, isn't it?"

"So plausible," I answered, looking it straight in the face, "that... it has but one weak point. We might make a coroner's jury or even a common jury accept it, on Sebastian's expert evidence. Sebastian can work wonders; but we could never make--"

Hilda Wade finished the sentence for me as I paused: "Hugo Le Geyt consent to advance it."

I lowered my head. "You have said it," I answered.

"Not for the children's sake?" Mrs. Mallet cried, with clasped hands.

"Not for the children's sake, even," I answered. "Consider for a moment, Mrs. Mallet: IS it true? Do you yourself BELIEVE it?"

She threw herself back in her chair with a dejected face. "Oh, as for that," she cried, wearily, crossing her hands, "before you and Hilda, who know all, what need to prevaricate? How CAN I believe it? We understand how it came about. That woman! That woman!"

"The real wonder is," Hilda murmured, soothing her white hand, "that he contained himself so long!"

"Well, we all know Hugo," I went on, as quietly as I was able; "and, knowing Hugo, we know that he might be urged to commit this wild act in a fierce moment of indignation--righteous indignation on behalf of his motherless girls, under tremendous provocation. But we also know that, having once committed it, he would never stoop to disown it by a subterfuge."

The heart-broken sister let her head drop faintly. "So Hilda told me,"

she murmured; "and what Hilda says in these matters is almost always final."

We debated the question for some minutes more. Then Mrs. Mallet cried at last: "At any rate, he has fled for the moment, and his flight alone brings the worst suspicion upon him. That is our chief point. We must find out where he is; and if he has gone right away, we must bring him back to London."

"Where do you think he has taken refuge?"

"The police, Dr. Sebastian has ascertained, are watching the railway stations, and the ports for the Continent."

"Very like the police!" Hilda exclaimed, with more than a touch of contempt in her voice. "As if a clever man-of-the-world like Hugo Le Geyt would run away by rail, or start off to the Continent! Every Englishman is noticeable on the Continent. It would be sheer madness!"

"You think he has not gone there, then?" I cried, deeply interested.

"Of course not. That is the point I hinted at just now. He has defended many persons accused of murder, and he often spoke to me of their incredible folly, when trying to escape, in going by rail, or in setting out from England for Paris. An Englishman, he used to say, is least observed in his own country. In this case, I think I KNOW where he has gone, how he went there."

"Where, then?"

"WHERE comes last; HOW first. It is a question of inference."

"Explain. We know your powers."

"Well, I take it for granted that he killed her--we must not mince matters--about twelve o'clock; for after that hour, the servants told Lina, there was quiet in the drawing-room. Next, I conjecture, he went upstairs to change his clothes: he could not go forth on the world in an evening suit; and the housemaid says his black coat and trousers were lying as usual on a chair in his dressing-room--which shows at least that he was not unduly flurried. After that, he put on another suit, no doubt--WHAT suit I hope the police will not discover too soon; for I suppose you must just accept the situation that we are conspiring to defeat the ends of justice."

"No, no!" Mrs. Mallet cried. "To bring him back voluntarily, that he may face his trial like a man!"

"Yes, dear. That is quite right. However, the next thing, of course, would be that he would shave in whole or in part. His big black beard was so very conspicuous; he would certainly get rid of that before attempting to escape. The servants being in bed, he was not pressed for time; he had the whole night before him. So, of course, he shaved.

On the other hand, the police, you may be sure, will circulate his photograph--we must not shirk these points"--for Mrs. Mallet winced again--"will circulate his photograph, BEARD AND ALL; and that will really be one of our great safeguards; for the bushy beard so masks the face that, without it, Hugo would be scarcely recognisable. I conclude, therefore, that he must have shorn himself BEFORE leaving home; though naturally I did not make the police a present of the hint by getting Lina to ask any questions in that direction of the housemaid."

"You are probably right," I answered. "But would he have a razor?"

"I was coming to that. No; certainly he would not. He had not shaved for years. And they kept no men-servants; which makes it difficult for him to borrow one from a sleeping man. So what he would do would doubtless be to cut off his beard, or part of it, quite close, with a pair of scissors, and then get himself properly shaved next morning in the first country town he came to."

"The first country town?"

"Certainly. That leads up to the next point. We must try to be cool and collected." She was quivering with suppressed emotion herself, as she said it, but her soothing hand still lay on Mrs. Mallet's. "The next thing is--he would leave London."

"But not by rail, you say?"

"He is an intelligent man, and in the course of defending others has thought about this matter. Why expose himself to the needless risk and observation of a railway station? No; I saw at once what he would do. Beyond doubt, he would cycle. He always wondered it was not done oftener, under similar circ.u.mstances."

"But has his bicycle gone?"

"Lina looked. It has not. I should have expected as much. I told her to note that point very un.o.btrusively, so as to avoid giving the police the clue. She saw the machine in the outer hall as usual."

"He is too good a criminal lawyer to have dreamt of taking his own,"

Mrs. Mallet interposed, with another effort.