“It mustn’t go on,” said another, and got up. “I’ll go across to Bent’s and get him to come over and take Cotherstone away. Bent’s the only man that’ll have any influence with him.”
He went out and crossed the Market Place to Bent’s office. But Bent was not there. By his advice Lettie had gone to stay with some friends until the recent proceedings were over in one way or another, and Bent himself, as soon as Cotherstone had left the court, had hurried away to catch a train to the town in which she was temporarily staying in order to tell her the news and bring her home. So the would-be doer-of-good went back disappointed—and as he reached the hotel, Cotherstone and the barrister emerged from it, parted at the door with evident great cordiality, and went their several ways. And Cotherstone, passing the man who had been to Bent’s, stared him in the face and cut him dead.
“It’s going to be war to the knife between Cotherstone and the town,” remarked the ambassador, when he re-entered the big room and joined his own circle. “He passed me just now as if I were one of the paving-stones he trod on! And did you see his face as he went out?—egad, instead of looking as if he’d had too much to drink, he looked too sober to please me. You mind if something doesn’t happen—yon fellow’s desperate!”
“What should he be desperate about?” asked one of the group. “He’s saved his own neck!”
“It was that shouting at him when he came out that did it,” observed another man quietly. “He’s the sort of man to resent aught like that. If Cotherstone thinks public opinion’s against him—well, we shall see!”
Cotherstone walked steadily away through the Market Place when he left the barrister. Whatever the men in the big room might have thought, he had not been indulging too freely in the little parlour. He had pressed champagne on the group around him, but the amount he had taken himself had not been great and it had pulled him together instead of intoxicating him. And his excitement had suddenly died down, and he had stopped what might have developed into a drinking bout by saying that he must go home. And once outside, he made for his house, and as he went he looked neither to right nor left, and if he met friend or acquaintance his face became hard as flint.
Cotherstone, indeed, was burning and seething with indignation. The taunts flung at him as he stood on the Town Hall steps, the looks turned in his direction as he walked away with the convivially inclined barrister, the expression on the faces of the men in the big room at the Highmarket Arms—all these things had stung him to the quick. He knew, whatever else he might have been, or was, he had proved a faithful servant to the town. He had been a zealous member of the Corporation, he had taken hold of the financial affairs of the borough when they were in a bad way and had put them in a safe and prosperous footing; he had worked, thought, and planned for the benefit of the place—and this was his reward! For he knew that those taunts, those looks, those half-averted, half-sneering faces meant one thing, and one thing only—the Highmarket men believed him equally guilty with Mallalieu, and had come to the conclusion that he was only let off in order that direct evidence against Mallalieu might be forthcoming. He cursed them deeply and bitterly—and sneered at them in the same breath, knowing that even as they were weathercocks, veering this way and that at the least breath of public opinion, so they were also utter fools, wholly unable to see or to conjecture.
The excitement that had seized upon Cotherstone in face of that public taunting of him died away in the silence of his own house—when Lettie and Bent returned home in the course of the afternoon they found him unusually cool and collected. Bent had come with uneasy feelings and apprehensions; one of the men who had been at the Highmarket Arms had chanced to be in the station when he and Lettie arrived, and had drawn him aside and told him of what had occurred, and that Cotherstone was evidently going on the drink. But there were no signs of anything unusual about Cotherstone when Bent found him. He said little about the events of the morning to either Bent or Lettie; he merely remarked that things had turned out just as he had expected and that now perhaps they would get matters settled; he had tea with them; he was busy with his books and papers in his own room until suppertime; he showed no signs of anything unusual at supper, and when an hour later he left the house, saying that he must go down to the office and fetch the accumulated correspondence, his manner was so ordinary that Bent saw no reason why he should accompany him.
But Cotherstone had no intention of going to his office. He left his house with a fixed determination. He would know once and for all what Highmarket felt towards and about him. He was not the man to live under suspicion and averted looks, and if he was to be treated as a suspect and a pariah he would know at once.
There was at that time in Highmarket a small and select club, having its house in the Market Place, to which all the principal townsmen belonged. Both Mallalieu and Cotherstone had been members since its foundation; Cotherstone, indeed, was its treasurer. He knew that the club would be crowded that night—very well, he would go there and boldly face
