Theo broke off, silenced by a lifted finger. Martin’s voice could be heard in the hall, fiercely interrogating Allenby.

“How rash! how witless of him!” sighed the Earl.

Hasty footsteps were crossing the hall; the door burst open, and Martin came impetuously into the room, and slammed the door shut again with one careless, backward thrust of his hand.

“Don’t move, Martin!” said the Earl warningly.

“St. Erth! Don’t you see? — don’t you understand?” Martin cried. “It’s not me you need beware of!”

“Yes, I do understand,” Gervase said. “Better than you, it seems! You young fool, what if a shot were to be fired in this room, and Allenby ran in to find me dead, and you struggling with Theo? Do you think anyone would believe that it was Theo and not you who had shot me?”

“Are you mad?” Theo demanded harshly.

“No, I am neither mad nor fevered. See if he carries a pistol, Martin, if you please!”

“By all means! You will find that I am quite unarmed!”

Martin moved away from the door, and went behind him, feeling his pockets. He shook his head. “No: nothing.”

The Earl lowered his own pistol. “Then, between us, we will settle this affair,” he said.

“Are you, in all seriousness, accusing me — me! — of having tried to murder you?” Theo said. “It is preposterous! a sick man’s fantasy!”

“I had rather have called it a nightmare, Theo.”

“What, in God’s name, have I to gain by your death?”

“Nothing, if Martin were not implicated in it. If it could be made to appear that he had murdered me, everything you most care for!”

“If this is not madness, it must be fever! Was it I who resented your existence? Was it I who openly wished you had been killed in Spain? Or was it I who took care of your interests, and warned you, when you first came home to Stanyon, to be on your guard?”

“Were they my interests, Theo, or did you see them as your own?”

Martin, who had coloured vividly at his cousin’s words, interrupted, stammering a little. “Yes, I did resent his existence! I d-daresay I may have said I wished he had been killed! I don’t know! it’s very possible! But I never meant — I would never, even then,when I scarcely knew him, have tried to murder him!”

“Indeed?” Theo said swiftly. “Have you, as well as Gervase, forgotten what I saw when the button was lost from your foil? Were you not trying to murder him then?”

“No, no! I lost my temper — I did try for one moment —

But I wouldn’t have — Gervase, you made me go on fighting! I had recollected myself long before you disarmed me! I wasn’t trying to kill you!”

“My dear Martin, I know very well you would have dropped your point at a word from me. It was mistaken of me not to have spoken that word. But I did not then guess that I was helping you to build up evidence against yourself.” He smiled faintly. “You scarcely needed help, did you? If you had had to stand your trial for murder, I wonder if the jury would have reflected that your open hostility to me made it very unlikely that you could ever have had the least intention of killing me?”

“No!” Martin muttered. “You suspected me!”

“Yes, after the first attempt, I did suspect you, for that would have seemed to have been an accident, I thought.”

“First attempt?” Martin exclaimed. “Was there more than one, then?”

“Yes, there was more than one!” Theo struck in. “There was a broken bridge, Martin, which you knew of, and never mentioned to Gervase, though you knew he would ride over it! It was I who saved him that time! I think you have forgotten that, St. Erth!”

“Nonsense, Theo! Even had you thought I should be drowned, I am sure you would have called me back. Martin could have been accused of nothing worse than carelessness. He neither broke the bridge, nor sent me to ride over it.”

“Did I also stretch a cord across your path? If there were any truth in your suspicions, that incident alone must prove my innocence! You yourself have said that it would have seemed an accident! How might that have served my ends?”

“I said that so I thought at the time,” replied the Earl gently. “But if chance had not intervened, in the person of Miss Morville, not only should I have been despatched, but I think you would have contrived to supply evidence against Martin. Did you not do so once before?”

“When?” demanded Martin sharply.

Theo uttered a bark of laughter. “You may well ask!”

“On the night of the storm,” said Gervase, “when I am very sure that you entered my room by way of the secret stair, and dropped one of Martin’s handkerchiefs beside my bed.”

“Why — why — that night?” Martin exclaimed. “The night I went to Cheringham? I remember that you gave me back a handkerchief! You said I had dropped it. I thought you meant I had done so on the gallery!”

The Earl shook his head. “I found it in my room. I think you meant only to leave it if you succeeded in accomplishing your purpose, Theo. Perhaps you were startled by the slamming of the door which must have roused me. Was that it? Or was it my awakening that alarmed you?”

“Really, Gervase, this goes beyond the line of what is amusing! What possible grounds can you have for assuming that because you fancied you heard someone in your room, and later found a handkerchief of Martin’s by your bed, it must have been I who had been there? It is nothing but a wild story imagined by you to lend colour to the rest of your absurd suspicions!”

“Not quite,” answered Gervase. “I have an excellent memory, Theo. I recall very vividly what passed between us on the following day. How was it that, although you had warned me to beware of Martin, you did not, when I told you that I believed him to have been in my room that night, warn me that there was a way into the room of which I knew nothing?”

There was a moment’s silence before Theo retorted: “Good God, how should I have guessed that you were ignorant of it? That old stair! I never even thought of it!”

“That won’t fadge!” Martin interrupted. “If Gervase told you someone had entered his room, you must have thought of it!”

“Perhaps I set as little store then by Gervase’s imaginings as I do now,” Theo said, with a contemptuous smile.

“Yet it was you who set my imagination to work,” said Gervase. He moved slowly back to the chair he had vacated, and sat down, as though he were very tired. “This is all so useless, Theo! Let us make an end! I know that you have three times tried to dispose both of me and of my heir. My death can benefit no one but Martin; if he was not guilty of the attempts on my life, who but you could have been?”

“Yes!” Martin said impetuously. “I knew that, but you did not! That night I did come to your room by way of the secret stair — you didn’t believe what I told you! You would not allow me to come near you again! How could you think I would skulk in some bush to shoot you unawares? I didn’t behave well towards you — I said things I ought not to have said! — but, my God, if I meant to kill my greatest enemy it would be in fair fight!”

“Yes, Martin, I know. I did believe what you told me, but I found it impossible to believe that the one person at Stanyon whom I had thought to be my friend could have all the time been plotting my death.” He paused, and for an instant he looked at his cousin, standing rigid and silent on the other side of the table. Then he added, with a slight smile: “Even when I was in no case to think at all, it did occur to me that had it been you who shot me you would not have missed your mark! For the rest, nothing was certain, nothing proved. When I refused to permit you to come near me, I was acting only on a suspicion I would, God knows! have been glad to have seen refuted! But if it was true, both your safety and mine, while I was so helpless, lay in letting it be known that you had never, for one instant, had access to my room. I suppose I had then no doubt of the truth. I hardly know. I would have given so much to have had my suspicions refuted! No, I don’t mean that I would have preferred to have known that you were my would-be assassin! Not that! Nothing, in fact, that was possible, or that I could explain to you. I told myself I must wait for some proof that you had told me the truth — something more sure than what Theo had called my imaginings. When I knew beyond doubting that it was not you who had tried to kill me, then I waited until I had decided what was best to be done, and until I should be well enough to settle the affair alone.”

“May I know when it was that you knew — beyond doubting — that it was not Martin who tried to kill you?” enquired Theo sardonically.

“When I realized that he had introduced a Bow Street Runner into my household,” replied the Earl, with a gleam of amusement. “With instructions to dog my every step!”

“You guessed it!” Martin ejaculated. “How? What made you think it?”

“My dear boy! It was patent! I am aware that poor Lucy darkly suspects of him being a hired assassin, but I could conceive of nothing more unlikely! I am afraid you will have to forgive me: I served him a very scurvy trick today! But if I had not obliged him to accompany me, I am very sure he would have followed me on horseback, and the last thing I desire is to have an officer of the law meddling in this business. I conclude that by some means unknown to me he contrived to reach Stanyon far sooner than I had supposed he could, or you would not have galloped that bay of yours into a lather in your gallant but misguided attempt to preserve me from an untimely end!”

Martin blushed, but said in a brooding tone: “It was Hickling’s notion that I should make use of his precious uncle! He was a Runner, but he ain’t now, of course, and no wonder! Much use he has been to me! To be taken in by such a child’s trick! Good God! The only thing he did, and I suppose it doesn’t prove anything, was to find a button that was torn from my shooting-jacket not five yards from where I told you I was struck down, that day when you were shot. If I was dragged clear of the undergrowth, before being hoisted up by — ” He paused, and cast a smouldering glance at Theo — “by you,my dear cousin! — it must have been torn off then! He found signs, too, that a horse had stood for some time within the wood. But that don’t prove much either! I know it could be explained away!”

“I don’t doubt that it was Theo who hid his gig, when I had parted from him, and thought him on the road to this place; waited for you; stunned you; left your gun and your shot-belt to be found; and carried you off in the gig. Evesleigh is not so far from Wisbech, and I have discovered that he did not arrive here until evening. You will tell me, perhaps, that you visited outlying parts of my estates, Theo, which made you late. Don’t! I should not believe you, and I would so much prefer you to tell me no more lies! Had you killed me, had there been a hue and cry after Martin, and he had told that story, it must have been thought the wildest and stupidest attempt to escape justice that ever was heard! But you didn’t kill me; there was no hue and cry. The story was told only to us, and although some of us disbelieved it I did not. Its very improbability made me think it the truth. What a risk you took, Theo! If some chance wayfarer had discovered him before he had rid himself of the bonds you so carefully loosened — ! It could have happened, you know. And if I did not die, surely you must have known that it would not be long before Martin at least realized the truth!”

“Well, I did, of course, though not quite at once,” admitted Martin. “It seemed so impossible that Theo could have done such a thing to you! Only, I knew I had not, so there was no one else! And when I had had leisure to think about my having been kidnapped in such a way, naturally I began to see how it must have been! I knew it had been done so that I should be blamed for your death, but I never guessed the whole! Nor that he would not harm you if I could not be blamed! It is the most infamous thing! It was bad enough when I only thought he had kidnapped me to save himself from being suspected! All I thought was that he would kill you, if he could, and very likely me too, but not like that! Later — when all the scandal had been forgotten! That’s why I hired Leek — at least, it is in part! I thought he might be able to discover some proof that it was Theo, and not me! For what was the use of telling you what I suspected, when you were hand-in-glove with Theo, and seemed not to believe a word I said? I’m not such a gudgeon, either, as not to have known that Chard was spying on me! In fact, I made sure you had ordered him to!”