‘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!’
Then he stopped, for he saw that the Earl was not looking at him, and the pistol was not being levelled at him.
‘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 open 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?’