“I know,” replied Mrs. Gretorex in a low voice. “I realise, too, that he believes that Roger did that awful thing.”
“But Mr. Finch,” said Enid eagerly, “knows that Roger is innocent! Would you mind my going and seeing him? He’s always at the office long before Mr. Oram arrives there in the morning.”
“You can do exactly what you think best. I trust you entirely; so, I know, does Roger.”
Twenty minutes later Enid Dent was sitting in the rather drab-looking waiting-room, lined with steel-bound boxes, where she had spent, during the last few weeks, many dreary, anxious minutes. But this time she had not long to wait, for Mr. Oram’s head clerk soon appeared, a look of surprise on his face.
“I’m afraid you’ll think I’ve come very early,” she said nervously. “But the truth is, Mr. Finch, I wanted to have a short talk with you. And I was anxious to see you before Mr. Oram arrived here this morning.”
“You come up now, at once, to Mr. Oram’s room, Miss Dent. He won’t be here today, at all.”
A feeling of relief swept over Enid Dent. She had a regard for Mr. Oram, but she was also rather afraid of him. And she resented keenly a fact which had become at once apparent to her—that he was convinced, even if most unwillingly, of his client’s guilt.
Enid had a direct, honest nature, as have so many people who yet do not wear their hearts upon their sleeves. So it was that when the two were together in Mr. Oram’s room, she began without any preamble:
“From something you said the other day, Mr. Finch, I understood that you believe there’s some as yet quite unsuspected mystery behind this story of Jervis Lexton’s death. If I am right, will you tell me what it is you do think? Also whether anything can be done to bring the truth to light before—” And then once more she repeated that word “before,” which may mean so very much or so very little in life.
Alfred Finch felt and looked uncomfortable. To make a remark in a casual way is very different from being pinned down, and asked what it is exactly that you meant by saying what you did. But the girl was looking at him with such anxious, appealing eyes, and, after all, if he was a fool, he was being a fool in good company, that of the great Sir Joseph Molloy himself.
Mr. Oram’s head clerk and the famous counsel had become friends over the Lexton case, and what Mr. Finch was about to expound to Enid Dent as his own theory was really Sir Joseph Molloy’s theory. Not, as he intended carefully to explain, as to what had certainly happened, but as to what might conceivably have happened, to provide an explanation of what seemed inexplicable—how, that is, Jervis Lexton had come by his death.
“You may be aware,” he began a little nervously, “that there is a section of the public, including whom I may call our most noted amateur criminologists, who are convinced that we needn’t go further than Mrs. Lexton herself. Their view is that, apart from Mr. Roger, no one else, except the lady who is now his widow, can have had the slightest motive for getting rid of poor Lexton. Now I don’t share that view at all!”
“Neither do I,” said Enid quickly. “We all know that Mrs. Lexton had every reason for wanting her husband to remain alive.”
“But what I do believe,” and a queer expression came over Alfred Finch’s shrewd face, “is that Mrs. Lexton knows a good deal more than she admitted yesterday in the witness-box. I can’t help suspecting that there is some man, a stranger to the case, but well known to her, who had some vital interest in compassing Jervis Lexton’s death. Far stranger things happen in real life than any novelist would dare to put in a story, Miss Dent. Men, aye, and women too, are more unscrupulous than any ordinary person would imagine. Even Mr. Oram would agree to that. If we can find among Mrs. Lexton’s admirers—and she has a goodish few—some wealthy man who is in love with her, and who has easy access to any form of arsenic, we might have something like new evidence to offer when the case comes up on appeal.”
“But if that is true,” said Enid quickly, “then the nurse must have known that Mr. Lexton had some other visitor within a few hours of his death—and the parlourmaid who gave evidence as to admitting Dr. Gretorex the afternoon before Mr. Lexton died must have known it too.”
Alfred Finch looked straight into the girl’s now flushed, anxious face.
“What is it,” he asked impressively, “that rules the whole world today?”
And, as he saw she looked bewildered, he snapped out the one word, “Money! What Mrs. Lexton and her lot call ‘the ready.’ ”
What did he mean? In what way could money have played a part in this sinister business?
His next words enlightened her.
“Money can do anything nowadays, for everybody wants money, and spends money as they never did before. Believe me, Miss Dent, no one, in these days, is incorruptible.”
“What a terrible thing to say—even to think!” exclaimed Enid.
“It may be terrible, but it’s the truth, Miss Dent! And it’s particularly true when one considers the people who were mixed up in this affair. All women, and poor themselves, mark you. I don’t mean to imply for a moment that they meant to connive at murder. My view is that their mouths, maybe, were shut with gold before they had any idea what it was that they were going to be asked to stay ‘mum’ about. But then? Well, then, they wisely, in their own interest, continued to keep their mouths shut!”
“I see,” said Enid slowly.
“I was very much struck by the demeanour of that Nurse
