Suffering his threat to go unheeded, Draycott looked him steadily in the face. Clifford, the biggest and most powerful man in the regiment, addressed himself to the infuriated Dodwell.

"Let me tell you something frankly. I've had doubts about you from the first; and I've not been the only doubter. I for one have regretted the part I played that night; I only hope that one day I shall be able to forget it. I'm not saying a word for Draycott, he's given himself away with every word he's said; but he'd better do that than continue to play the cur to Beaton in the way he owns he has done. Your case, Dodwell, is safer in our hands than in your own. After what has happened we'll sift his story to the bottom before we p.r.o.nounce judgment on it either way; I'm afraid the time has gone by when his mere 'Yes' or 'No' would be accepted. But if you want to force us to the conclusion that you are the kind of person he says you are, you can't do better than continue your present behaviour. If you weren't afraid of what he has to say, you'd let him say it; that, to us, if not to you, is as plain as the nose upon your face. Draycott, I'm going to take the liberty of asking you one or two questions. Do you seriously wish us to understand that merely because Dodwell winked at you, you charged Beaton with being a cheat when you knew he wasn't?"

"That's what it comes to."

"Then it comes to a very ugly thing."

"That I realise. Dodwell said to me that if I helped him to get even with Beaton he'd say no more about that money. I took the wink to mean that that was the moment in which he wanted me to help him--and I did.

The next day he gave me a quittance for the whole amount; I had not misunderstood him."

"Do you mean to tell us that the next day you talked Beaton over between you, and that each of you admitted to the other that he had lied?"

"The next morning Dodwell came to my room and told me that after all he had found out that he was wrong in supposing that I owed him money, and he gave me a sort of friendly note admitting it in so many words."

"So you got your price?"

"I did."

"Then what was said about the night before?"

"Very little--in words; but he knew I hadn't seen Beaton cheat, and I knew he hadn't."

"How did you know he hadn't?"

"Because Beaton hadn't cheated; I'd been watching him all the time, he was seated next to me, and I was sure of it."

"Dodwell charged him with subst.i.tuting one card for another. There was a card upon the floor; Dodwell said he had dropped it and taken the other in its place."

"The card upon the floor was mine."

"Do you mean that you had dropped it intentionally?"

"I didn't know I had dropped it till it was picked up. I recognised it as mine when I saw it--it was a nine of spades. I had two pairs in my hand--nine high; the nine of spades was one of them."

"And you, knowing the nine of spades was yours, had allowed us to think that Beaton had dropped it from his hand to take another, and a better one, in its place; in fact, one which gave him a full. You allowed us to think that?"

"I did."

"You admit that you never for a moment supposed that Beaton had cheated, having sufficient reasons for knowing otherwise; but it's possible that Dodwell may have thought he did."

"He never thought it."

"What grounds have you for saying that? Now, Dodwell, don't you interfere; you shall have your turn presently, when you'll have every opportunity of making Draycott out even blacker than he has painted himself. Consider, Draycott, before you speak; it's a very queer story you're asking us to swallow, much queerer than your first. What grounds have you for saying that Dodwell never thought, even at the moment of making his accusation, that Beaton had cheated?"

"He told me so."

"Weren't you surprised at his making to you such a remarkable admission?"

Draycott paused before he answered.

"I was inclined to think at first that he might have made a mistake, though I couldn't see how he had done it; but before very long I knew he hadn't. That nine of spades was on the floor. I didn't know I'd dropped it, but as I threw down my hand he saw me brush it off the table with my elbow. He knew that it never had anything to do with Beaton."

"When did he make you these frank confessions?"

"That belongs to the part of the story that I haven't come to yet."

"Oh, there is a part of the story that you haven't come to? What part's that? You seem to have been bottling up a good deal inside yourself, Draycott."

"It's the story of what took place on the night of the Easter ball at Avonham."

CHAPTER x.x.x

The Story of what Happened after the Easter Ball

So far the only sounds heard in the billiard-room had been the questions and the answers. The listeners had been so still; particularly had this seemed to be the case with Violet Forster. She gripped with her gloved hand the back of the chair as if from the very intensity of the grip she derived moral support. She stood very straight, with her lips tightly pressed together, and with a strained look on her white face, as if with her every faculty she was bent on following the words, without missing a syllable or an accent, and, if possible, reading any hidden meaning which might lie behind them. Her immobility was so continuous as to be almost unnatural.

But when Mr. Draycott made that reference to what had happened on the occasion of the Easter ball at Avonham her whole being seemed to undergo a sudden transformation. Her hands fell to her side; a faint flush came into her cheeks; her lips parted; she moved a little forward with an air of odd expectancy, as if she longed, and feared, to hear what was coming.

Before Draycott was allowed to continue there was an interposition from Anthony Dodwell, addressed directly to him.

"Let me warn you, Draycott, that for every lie you're going to utter--and I can see from the look of you that you're going to tell nothing else but lies--I'll call you to an account; and don't flatter yourself that, however your friends may try to cover you, you'll escape me."

As he answered, Draycott looked Anthony Dodwell very straight in the face.

"I shall never be afraid of you again--never! Don't you suppose it!"

"Don't you be so sure. You were afraid of me once; and, when you and I are again alone together, you'll be just as much afraid of me as you ever were. Gentlemen of your habits of body are only courageous when they know themselves to be in a position in which they are sure of being protected by their friends."

"I don't think I ever was afraid of you, Dodwell; but you were a mystery to me, I didn't understand you, and I was a fool. But now I do understand you; if you were holding a revolver to my throat I shouldn't be afraid of the kind of man you are. I know you."

Draycott turned to the girl.

"You remember, Miss Forster, that on the night of the Easter ball you said something to me about that poker business?"

"I remember quite well."

"I'd been ashamed of myself a long time before that; but what you said to me made my shame greater than I could bear. All along I had had a feeling that if Beaton had gone under because of what had happened, of what I had said, then I was directly responsible for his undoing; although he had never done me a bad turn--I had done that to him. I understood that nothing had been heard of him, that he had disappeared.

He might have committed suicide; I was haunted by a feeling that he had. If so, his blood was on my head."

"From whom have you been learning all this fine language, Draycott?"

The question came from Dodwell; it went unanswered.

"I told myself, over and over again, that I would make a clean breast of it, that I would let everybody know that Beaton was a man of honour, and that I was not. But I had not found it easy, when it came to the point; in the first place, there was Dodwell; and then there was my--I suppose it was cowardice."