Alfred Finch was reading a copy of an old complicated will. But though he was trying to concentrate on the business in hand, he found his mind straying persistently to the prison cell where Roger Gretorex sat waiting for the morning of the day after tomorrow. For one thing, he had heard by a side wind that the warder who had Gretorex in his special charge believed him innocent, and this made a great impression on him. That warder had had charge of over thirty men condemned to death, and this was the first time he had ever believed one of them to have been innocent of the crime for which he was to suffer death.
The telephone bell at his elbow rang.
“Miss Dent is on the line, Mr. Finch. Can you speak to her? She says it’s very urgent.”
“Put her through at once.”
And then he heard an eager, quivering voice, “Is that Mr. Finch? Can you come at once, Mr. Finch, to 6 Ferry Place? I believe I’ve got some new evidence.”
“New evidence?”
Mr. Finch, though he was alone, shook his head. Had he not himself done everything that was in the power of mortal man to procure new evidence in the last three weeks, and had he not entirely failed?
“I don’t wish to say more over the telephone, but can you come now, at once, to take a statement from Dr. Gretorex’s day maid, Mrs. Huntley?”
Mrs. Huntley? Why, that was the old caretaker woman! He remembered distinctly reading over the record of her short, colourless, unimportant interview with Inspector Orpington.
Mrs. Huntley could have nothing new to say of the slightest value. Stop, though—she probably knew certain facts which might have been regarded as greatly to Mrs. Lexton’s discredit, had they come out at the trial. Facts which would certainly have added pungency to Sir Joseph Molloy’s speech for the defence. But Mrs. Huntley could have nothing to reveal that could make any real difference, now, to the fate of Roger Gretorex.
However, if only because he had come to like and respect Mrs. Gretorex’s young friend, Mr. Finch made up his mind he would do what Enid Dent desired.
“I’ll be with you within twenty minutes,” he called out.
“Be as quick as you can. I’m so frightened, Mr. Finch.”
“Frightened?” he repeated, surprised.
“Yes.” The voice dropped. “Supposing Mrs. Huntley were to die, suddenly, before you’ve heard what she’s got to say? I dare not tell you what it is over the telephone. But it is very important—”
Now Mr. Finch thought so little of what he was going to do, and, presumably, hear, that he simply left word for Mr. Oram that he had had to go out. And when he reached Westminster, he did not dismiss his taxicab; he left it at the end of Ferry Place.
Enid Dent stood waiting for him at the open door of the little house, and he noted at once the strained, excited look on her face.
Had she been a young man, and not a young woman, Alfred Finch would have exclaimed, “Come, come! What’s all this pother about?” But as it was, he looked at her very kindly, and made up his mind that he would “let her down” as gently as might be.
“I hope she’ll tell you all she told me,” murmured Enid as he shut the door. “Mrs. Lexton told a lie when she said she had never been here but once, and then with a woman friend. Mrs. Huntley swore to Roger Gretorex that she would say nothing about that, and she feels that she is breaking her oath. But I doubt if she realises herself the fearful importance of something else she told me, something Roger may suspect, but which only she actually saw.”
And then she opened the door of the consulting-room.
Mrs. Huntley was sitting all in a heap in a chair, staring before her. She looked up when the two came in, but she did not get up.
“Here is Mr. Finch. I want you to tell him exactly what you told me.”
“You tell him, miss,” muttered the old woman. “I’ve told you everything and—and I feels very upset.”
“Mrs. Huntley is ready to swear,” said Enid quietly, “that she once found Mrs. Lexton alone in the surgery here, with a jar labelled arsenic standing on the table before her.”
Alfred Finch, startled, looked hard at the old woman. Was she telling the truth, or had she invented this ingenious story?
“When did that happen?” he asked quietly. “Is there any way in which you can fix the date of that occurrence, Mrs. Huntley?”
She looked up at him. “Yes,” she said dully. “ ’Twas the last time Mrs. Lexton ever had supper here. The doctor got a messenger boy, and sent him up to a grand shop in Piccadilly for some cold fish—sole, I thinks it was—done up in a newfangled fashion. Also there was a game pie, likewise an ice.”
“But how does that fix the date in your mind?” asked Alfred Finch rather impatiently.
“I can’t fix it. But you could, sir, from the messenger boys’ office. I heard one of them boys once tell the doctor that they kep’ all their receipts. ’Twas early last summer when that happened.”
He felt suddenly convinced that she at least believed she was telling the truth.
“The last time Mrs. Lexton had supper here?” It was that statement which in a sense impressed him. And had he been another kind of man he would undoubtedly have explained, “But you yourself signed a statement declaring that Mrs. Lexton had never been here, at 6 Ferry Place, excepting on one occasion to tea?”
But, instead of saying that, he observed encouragingly, “Now listen to me, Mrs. Huntley. You say, I notice, ‘the last time.’ Would Mrs. Lexton have been here to supper as many, say, as three or four times?”
“Much oftener than that!” exclaimed the old woman, rousing herself. “At one time, Mrs. Lexton was here constant. She’d come in just for
