Miles, fascinated and intent, waited motionless for Brand to discover him. He might have preserved that pose indefinitely had his attention not been distracted by a sheet of paper that, catching a draught, floated silently to the floor. Instinctively, Miles stooped to retrieve it, but not until he had it under his hand did he realise that this was the coping-stone of the edifice against the artist that he had laboriously built up during the past weeks. The drawing in his hand represented a head, one of those self-portraits certain painters frequently affect. It was displayed in the framework of a mirror, of French workmanship and unusual design. Miles knew at a glance where the original of that mirror hung. At the foot of the page was Brand’s elaborate monogram, and a date—December 25th…
Miles drew a deep sigh. No jury, he thought, could evade the implications of such a piece of evidence as this.
As though that sigh roused him from his mood of intentness, Brand turned abruptly. Miles thought that he saw and recognised him, though he displayed no surprise at his presence there. Probably, decided the lawyer, he was not yet sufficiently aware of his environment to experience such an emotion. The vision that had held him through the morning still enchained his imagination and his purpose. But when he spoke his voice sounded normal enough.
He spoke to the model. “You can go now. It’s finished.” There wasn’t a quiver of feeling in his voice, but Miles felt suddenly reminded of another occasion when a similar expression had been employed. “It is finished.” Something so magnificent that it transcended speech. Brand, too, seemed to have changed, to have matured and developed into the personality that had always been his but had hitherto been stunted and repressed. As the model took up a soft brown hat, and swept past the stranger without a glance, Miles got a full-face view of his brother-in-law. And he felt a new embarrassment. This was not the embarrassment he had anticipated, the shame of admitting his share in what now appeared an act of cowardly treachery, but the embarrassment a small man feels in the presence of a superior. Miles could not have explained precisely where the change lay, but he felt guilty of an impertinence in coming to warn this stranger of what lay ahead, in a sense of dictating to him a course of action that now he could scarcely contemplate.
“I wasn’t expecting you,” said Brand, and Miles saw that under the composure and the purpose in that unforgettable face was a new strength to accept whatever circumstance might be offering him. “Is anything wrong?”
“I’ve been looking for you,” said Miles inanely.
“Complimentary of you. But why?” But he knew the answer to that question, and Miles knew that he knew it. He had, in the depths of his mind, realised that at any moment this shock might be sprung upon him, and these weeks that had intervened since his father’s death had made him able to endure any consummation, even the one that already he saw approaching him.
“Have you forgotten that the trial starts to-morrow?”
“Does that interest me? I’ve nothing fresh to say.”
“Are you sure, Brand?” And then, because he could not endure this indignity either for himself or for his companion, he added quickly, “Believe me, it’s no good. We know too much. I could demonstrate to you exactly what you did—how you forged both cheques, the one for your own advantage and the other as a means of self-defence; how you burnt Eustace’s handkerchief…”
Brand started a little. “Eustace’s handkerchief?”
“Yes. Isobel remembers twitting you about it. Oh, it’s true enough. I shouldn’t have come over here to warn you if I hadn’t been sure of my ground.”
“No,” agreed Brand slowly. “I don’t suppose you would. And yet I thought I safeguarded myself so well.”
“You did,” Miles reassured him. “But chance was against you. You can’t always make allowances for that.”
“Chance,” repeated Brand, “the one element that can’t be squared. When you said you came to warn me, what did you mean?”
“That they may be on your track now, for all I know.”
Brand regarded him curiously. “You’re a peculiar sort of lawyer, aren’t you? Frustrating the ends of justice. Doesn’t this sort of thing make you an accessory after the fact?”
“Possibly it does,” Miles agreed. “But, as a matter of fact, justice isn’t going to suffer. The end, in effect…” But he stopped there. He could not voice the baldness of the truth.
“And you’ll save the country five thousand pounds,” applauded Brand characteristically. “How did you find out?”
Miles explained. “You couldn’t allow for being seen by the servant or for her coming to me in quite a different connection. It’s hardly reasonable to expect you to think of the finger-prints on the document. And as for this…” He held out the sheet of paper. “That must have been done in the library, after it happened, and before you left the room.” He regarded Brand with an odd expression, no longer contemptuous or horrified, but the look of a man who accepts another man’s standards without subscribing to them.
“I called it ‘The Murderer,’” said Brand slowly.
Miles allowed some of his suppressed feeling to escape in a sharp exclamation. “And it’s betrayed you.”
“Betrayed me?” He could not fathom the meaning of Brand’s smile. “Betrayed me? Ah, no. That’s scarcely fair. That, at least, is an office I have performed for myself.” He motioned to his companion to approach the canvas.
Miles, curiosity tempered by awe, crossed the room; but when he saw what the picture represented, he was stricken dumb. Brand had instantly forgotten him again.
The canvas was a large one, and displayed a man in a blue suit, with his back to the
