As a prisoner merely under detention, Cotherstone had privileges of which he took good care to avail himself. Four people he desired to see, and must see at once, on that first day in gaol—and he lost no time in making known his desires. One—and the most important—person was a certain solicitor in Norcaster who enjoyed a great reputation as a sharp man of affairs. Another—scarcely less important—was a barrister who resided in Norcaster, and had had it said of him for a whole generation that he had restored more criminals to society than any man of his profession then living. And the other two were his own daughter and Windle Bent. Them he must see—but the men of law first.
When the solicitor and the barrister came, Cotherstone talked to them as he had never talked to anybody in his life. He very soon let them see that he had two definite objects in sending for them: the first was to tell them in plain language that money was of no consideration in the matter of his defence; the second, that they had come there to hear him lay down the law as to what they were to do. Talk he did, and they listened—and Cotherstone had the satisfaction of seeing that they went away duly impressed with all that he had said to them. He went back to his cell from the room in which this interview had taken place congratulating himself on his ability.
“I shall be out of this, and all’ll be clear, a week today!” he assured himself. “We’ll see where that fool of a Mallalieu is by then! For he’ll not get far, nor go hidden for thirty years, this time.”
He waited with some anxiety to see his daughter, not because he must see her within the walls of a prison, but because he knew that by that time she would have learned the secrets of that past which he had kept so carefully hidden from her. Only child of his though she was, he felt that Lettie was not altogether of his sort; he had often realized that she was on a different mental plane from his own, and was also, in some respects, a little of a mystery to him. How would she take all this?—what would she say?—what effect would it have on her?—he pondered these questions uneasily while he waited for her visit.
But if Cotherstone had only known it, he need have suffered no anxiety about Lettie. It had fallen to Bent to tell her the sad news the afternoon before, and Bent had begged Brereton to go up to the house with him. Bent was upset; Brereton disliked the task, though he willingly shared in it. They need have had no anxiety, either. For Lettie listened calmly and patiently until the whole story had been told, showing neither alarm, nor indignation, nor excitement; her self-composure astonished even Bent, who thought, having been engaged to her for twelve months, that he knew her pretty well.
“I understand exactly,” said Lettie, when, between them, they had told her everything, laying particular stress on her father’s version of things. “It is all very annoying, of course, but then it is quite simple, isn’t it? Of course, Mr. Mallalieu has been the guilty person all through, and poor father has been dragged into it. But then—all that you have told me has only to be put before the—who is it?—magistrates?—judges?—and then, of course, father will be entirely cleared, and Mr. Mallalieu will be hanged. Windle—of course we shall have to put off the wedding?”
“Oh, of course!” agreed Bent. “We can’t have any weddings until all this business is cleared up.”
“That’ll be so much better,” said Lettie. “It really was becoming an awful rush.”
Brereton glanced at Bent when they left the house.
“I congratulate you on having a fiancée of a well-balanced mind, old chap!” he said. “That was—a relief!”
“Oh, Lettie’s a girl of singularly calm and equable temperament,” answered Bent. “She’s not easily upset, and she’s quick at sizing things up. And I say, Brereton, I’ve got to do all I can for Cotherstone, you know. What about his defence?”
“I should imagine that Cotherstone is already arranging his defence himself,” said Brereton. “He struck me during that talk this morning at Tallington’s as being very well able to take care of himself, Bent, and I think you’ll find when you visit him that he’s already fixed things. You won’t perhaps see why, and I won’t explain just now, but this foolish running away of Mallalieu, who, of course, is sure to be caught, is very much in Cotherstone’s favour. I shall be much surprised if you don’t find Cotherstone in very good spirits, and if there aren’t developments in this affair within a day or two which will impress the whole neighbourhood.”
Bent, visiting the prisoner in company with Lettie next day, found Brereton’s prediction correct. Cotherstone, hearing from his daughter’s own lips what she herself thought of the matter, and being reassured that all was well between Bent and her, became not merely confident but cheerily boastful. He would be free, and he would be cleared by that day next week—he was not sorry, he said, that at last all this had come out, for now he would be able to get rid of an incubus that had weighted him all his life.
“You’re very confident, you know,” remarked Bent.
“Not beyond reason,” asserted Cotherstone doggedly. “You wait
