This, then, was his case. Brand Gray had murdered his father, forged two cheques and the amazing document, and got away with it. Eustace had been arrested, partly on account of the cheque made out to him, but chiefly because of his finger-prints on the safe. But what of the finger-prints on the document? No one, it seemed, had thought of that. It had been taken for granted that that was authentic. But if, as he now suspected, Brand was its originator, then, whose-ever finger-prints did appear upon it, Adrian Gray’s certainly would not. Here, it seemed, was an obvious way of testing his theory.
2
Nevertheless, this discovery brought him no joy. Hitherto the zest of the affair itself had sustained him. But now he saw himself as Brand’s chief enemy, the relentless pursuer who without motive was hounding down the man he had stayed at King’s Poplars to help. It was an ironical situation, and to him a desperate one. Brand’s personality, powerful and creative, appeared to him as a thing of value and even of beauty; for Eustace, he had no more compassion than he would have for the slug that destroyed his roses or the earwig that crawled on his table. And yet—
In an agony of indecision he returned home. Ruth met him in the hall.
“Monty’s here,” she said. “Eustace’s boy.”
“What does he want with me?” demanded Miles, outraged.
“I suppose he wants you to help.”
“Well, I shan’t do it. It’s sheer nepotism. Aren’t there enough men in this country eager to be paid to wash Moore’s dirty linen in public, without his coming here? Hasn’t the fellow any sense of decency?”
But when he saw Montague, his rage evaporated. The lad was personable enough and held himself with a certain dignity that, in the circumstances, was moving.
He said, “I hope you don’t mind my coming here, Uncle Miles. I haven’t come professionally or anything like that. Father’s got a lawyer who’s doing what he can. But I thought I’d like to see you.”
Miles, puzzled but beginning to be impressed, offered him a cigarette and a chair.
“I don’t know that there’s anything I can do,” he remarked uneasily, with a quite unexpected sense of guilt.
“I daresay you wouldn’t be very much inclined to do it, if there were,” was Montague’s surprising retort. “It would only mean involving someone else, whom perhaps you prefer to father.”
“My dear boy,” expostulated Miles, professional dignity outraged by the suggestion of personal preference. And stopped. Because that, he saw, was precisely what he contemplated.
Montague went on, “Being in the house at the time, I thought you might remember if anything odd had happened. But I suppose if it had, and if you did, you’d have told the police already. No, I didn’t really come to you because I thought you could do anything, only—it is pretty ghastly, you know. Mother’s all to pieces, and Arnold—there isn’t much I can say to him. And every post brings the most vituperative letters from people who’re ruined by father’s concerns. Of course, they put all the blame on him. People never blame themselves for being fools. Or else friends write saying how dreadful it is for her—mother, I mean—and they quite understand. Which is all damn rot. She’s afraid to go out alone now, for fear of being insulted or pitied.”
Miles thought of her, bone-selfish, terrified, incapable of any generous emotion, of any delicacy of thought, sitting trembling in her beautiful, absurd drawing-room, with its hand-painted walls and silver panels, seeing her life a ruin, and her death—at the hands of hooligans who booed and shouted and wrote her abusive letters—imminent as soon as she put her head out of doors. Yet, though he was by nature a kindly man, he could not kindle within his breast a spark of compassion for a spirit so despicable.
“Have you seen your father?” he asked Montague suddenly.
‘I’ve just come from seeing him. That’s why…” He left the sentence unfinished.
“I see,” murmured Miles, and after a moment’s silence forced himself to ask. “How’s he taking things?”
“Pretty badly.” Montague’s tone was laconic, but a certain nervous clenching of the fingers he’d inherited from the Grays spoke more eloquently than words. “You know, it must be awful to be boxed in there and know that during the next two or three weeks you’re going to be dragged into court and accused of something you haven’t done, without an iota of proof that you didn’t do it. Father knows he can’t prove his innocence, and that everyone wants him to be found guilty. It’s enough to drive a man mad. Just waiting—waiting—and seeing no way out.”
He jumped up and began to lunge up and down the room; but even these movements were graceful. He was his father’s son, thought Miles, ashamed at his own surprise in discovering in any human being affection for such a man. After all, there were at least two personalities in every individual, and the domestic one might function in a man who was a shark, a murderer, and a coward.
“If I could go ahead with something, even if it led us into a blind alley,” Montague broke out. “It’s worse, I think, when you know you didn’t do it. You feel cheated into the bargain.”
No satisfaction out of actually committing the murder, reflected Miles, instantly nauseated. You couldn’t, it seemed, overcome the fellow’s commercial instincts, even in a situation so grave as this one. Yes, Miles could imagine him raving because he was being called upon to settle an account for which he was not responsible. Fear there would be, too, horror, the desperate twisting of the panic-stricken beast.
He let Montague go without any sort of assurance, but when he was alone again he faced the new situation his nephew’s visit had created. Hitherto, he had contemplated the position mainly from Brand’s point of view, seeing that strange, savage, yet not wholly ignoble figure, living by its own fierce
