“By you,” said Lambert quickly.  “So it was easy for you to leave a window unfastened, so that Silver might get outside to hide in the shrubbery.”

“Oh!” Garvington jumped up again, looking both pale and wicked.  “You want to put a rope round my neck, curse you.”

“That’s a melodramatic speech which is not true,” replied the other coldly.  “For I want to save you, or, rather, our name, from disgrace.  I won’t call in the police”—­Garvington winced at this word—­“because I wish to hush the matter up.  But since Chaldea and Silver accuse me and accuse Agnes of getting rid of Pine so that we might marry, it is necessary that I should learn the exact truth.”

“I don’t know it.  I know nothing more than I have confessed.”

“You are such a liar that I can’t believe you.  However, I shall go at once to Silver and you shall come with me.”

“I shan’t!” Garvington, who was overfed and flabby and unable to hold his own against a determined man, settled himself in his chair and looked as obstinate as a battery mule.

“Oh, yes, you will, you little swine,” said Lambert freezingly cold.

“How dare you call me names?”

“Names!  If I called you those you deserved I should have to annex the vocabulary of a Texan muledriver.  How such a beast as you ever got into our family I can’t conceive.”

“I am the head of the family and I order you to leave the room.”

“Oh, you do, do you?  Very good.  Then I go straight to Wanbury and shall tell what I have discovered to Inspector Darby.”

“No!  No!  No!  No!” Garvington, cornered at last, sprang from his chair and made for his cousin with unsteady legs.  “It might be unpleasant.”

“I daresay—­to you.  Well, will you come with me to Abbot’s Wood?”

“Yes,” whimpered Garvington.  “Wait till I get my cap and stick, curse you, for an interfering beast.  You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“Ah! then you do know something likely to reveal the truth.”

“I don’t—­I swear I don’t!  I only—­”

“Oh, damn you, get your cap, and let us be off,” broke in Lambert angrily, “for I can’t be here all day listening to your lies.”

Garvington scowled and ambled out of the room, closely followed by his cousin, who did not think it wise to lose sight of so shifty a person.  In a few minutes they were out of the house and took the path leading from the blue door to the postern gate in the brick wall surrounding the park.  It was a frosty, sunny day, with a hard blue sky, overarching a wintry landscape.  A slight fall of snow had powdered the ground with a film of white, and the men’s feet drummed loudly on the iron earth, which was in the grip of the frost.  Garvington complained of the cold, although he had on a fur overcoat which made him look like a baby bear.

“You’ll give me my death of cold, dragging me out like this,” he moaned, as he trotted beside his cousin.  “I believe you want me to take pneumonia so that I may die and leave you the title.”