“Yes,” said Sir Anthony.  “And do you know why?  Because I know you to be a liar and a scoundrel.”

I can never describe the awful horror that numbed me to the heart.  For a few moments my body seemed as lifeless as my legs.  The charge, astounding almost to grotesqueness in the eyes of Sir Anthony, and rousing him to mere wrath, deprived me of the power of speech.  For I knew, in that dreadful instant, that the man’s words contained some elements of truth.

All the pieces of the puzzle that had worried me at odd times for months fitted themselves together in a vivid flash.  Boyce and Althea!  I had never dreamed of associating their names.  That association was the key of the puzzle.  Out of the darkness disturbing things shone clear.  Boyce’s abrupt retirement from Wellingsford before the war; his cancellation by default of his engagement; his morbid desire, a year ago, to keep secret his presence in his own house; Gedge’s veiled threat to me in the street to use a way “that’ll knock all you great people of Wellingsford off your high horses;” his extraordinary interview with Boyce; his generally expressed hatred of Boyce.  Was this too the secret which he let out in his cups to Randall Holmes and which drove the young man from his society?  And Betty?  Boyce was a devil.  She wished he were dead.  And her words:  “You have behaved worse to others.  I don’t wonder at your shrinking from showing your face here.”  How much did Betty know?  There was the lost week —­in Carlisle?—­in poor Althea’s life.  And then there were Boyce’s half confessions, the glimpses he had afforded me into the tormented soul.  To me he had condemned himself out of his own mouth.

I repeat that, sitting there paralysed by the sudden shock of it, I knew—­not that the man was speaking the literal truth—­God forbid!—­but that Boyce was, in some degree, responsible for Althea’s death.

“Calling me names won’t alter the facts, Sir Anthony,” said Gedge, with a touch of insolence.  “I was there at the time.  I saw it.”

“If that’s true,” Sir Anthony retorted, “you’re an accessory after the fact, and in greater danger of being hanged than ever.”  He turned to me in his abrupt way.  “Now that we’ve heard this blackguard, shall we hand him over to the police?”

Being directly addressed, I recovered my nerve.

“Before doing that,” said I, “perhaps it would be best for us to hear what kind of a story he has to tell us.  We should also like to know his motives in not denouncing the supposed murderer at once, and in keeping his knowledge hidden all this time.”

“With regard to the last part of your remarks, I dare say you would,” said Gedge.  “Only I don’t know whether I’ll go so far as to oblige you.  Anyhow you may have discovered that I don’t particularly care about your class.  I’ve been preaching against your idleness and vanity and vices, and the strangling grip you have on the throats of the people, ever since I was a young man.  If one of your lot chose to do in another of your lot—­a common story of seduction and crime—­”