As we went down to dinner she whispered to me that, if Callaghan was the sort of man that I seemed to think, she would try to turn his thoughts in the useful direction; only I must let him alone for a little while. In the course of dinner, she told our guest what she had told me long before about Vane-Cartwright’s engagement, and how it had been broken off, and just what the young lady had said to her. Only of course she did not go on to tell him the rash inference which she had drawn as to Vane-Cartwright’s guilt. I could see that Callaghan heard her with strange emotion, but my wife speedily turned the conversation on to more commonplace topics, upon which, during the remainder of dinner, he responded to her brightly enough, but by no means with his usual appearance of interest.
After dinner Callaghan and I retired to my study to smoke pipes. He sat for a long while silent, and I thought that he had gone to sleep, or should have thought so but for the contraction of his brows. Suddenly he sat upright in his chair. “Faith!” he exclaimed with great energy, and with the air of a man to whom a really thrilling thought has just occurred, “I know what became of those eyeglasses of mine.” “What eyeglasses?” I asked, disappointed and annoyed at the triviality of what came forth as the issue of his cogitation. “Why,” he said, “I once took for a short time to wearing eyeglasses. I was looking at the stars with a man one night and I found I could not count seven Pleiades. So I went to an oculist who said he would pass me for the Navy, but as I was paying him a fee I might take a prescription for a pair of double eyeglasses which I never could keep steady on my nose.” “Well?” I said sulkily. “Well,” he answered, “it is only that I lost them while I was staying with Peters. Of course they went into that big despatch-box, which Vane-Cartwright always kept in his room. My dear Mr. Driver,” he said in a more serious tone, “do you really suppose that Vane-Cartwright had not possessed himself of something handy for throwing suspicion upon you, if you had turned out to be the convenient man? I might easily have been the convenient man, and in that case, the morning after the murder, my eyeglasses would have been found smashed and lying on the floor of Peters’ bedroom, as if he had knocked them off in struggling with me. Only (fortunately for you and me, Mr. Driver), Trethewy was chosen as the suitable man, and accidents that we know of prevented the plot against Trethewy working as well as perhaps the plot against you or me might have worked. Well,” he continued with a smile, “I have a good deal more to tell you about Mr. Thalberg, but that will keep for a bit, and we shall understand it better later. I suspect there is something different that you wanted to ask me about now.”
I asked him for anything that he remembered of that evening when Vane-Cartwright had first visited Peters at Long Wilton, while Callaghan was already staying in the house. He recounted to me and to my wife, whom we called in, the conversation and events of that evening in great detail. An indescribable change seemed to have come over him for a time; not only was the matter which he had to relate weighty, but the man himself gave me an impression of force and character which I had not previously suspected. I repeat only so much of his narrative as was of special interest for my purpose. “After a bit,” said Callaghan, “Peters and Vane-Cartwright got away on to the subject of their experiences in some Cannibal Islands, or French possessions, or I do not know where. I was not much interested, and I dozed a bit, till suddenly I was aroused and saw that there was something up. I do not know what Vane-Cartwright had said, but suddenly Peters said, ‘Sailed in what?’ three times as quick and three times as loud as his usual way of speaking. That was what woke me up. ‘In the’—I don’t remember the name, I did not quite catch it, for Vane-Cartwright was speaking very quietly, though I could see that his face was set hard and that his eyes were bright, and I began to think he did not look such a dull fellow as I thought him at first. Peters said nothing but ‘Oh,’ and this time very quietly. Then he got up and strode slowly about the room with his hands clenched. He did not seem to notice Vane-Cartwright much, and Vane-Cartwright went on talking, in as indifferent a way as he could, about cyclones and things, the usual sort of travellers’ talk, only without the lies that I should have thrown in; but he was watching Peters all the time like a cat. After a while Peters sat down again and seemed quite composed, and talked again in quite a friendly way, but it seemed to be an effort. Then he went and wrote a letter at the other end of the room, two letters rather; one I noticed was addressed to Bombay, or Beirut, or somewhere beginning with a B. Both the letters had twopenny-halfpenny stamps on them. Soon it was bedtime; but Peters was for taking his letters down to the post that they might go early in the morning, and Vane-Cartwright was very anxious to take the letters for him, as it would be very little out of his way to go down to the post. Peters thanked him in that very polite way which he had with him when he did feel really obstinate. I was not going with them, for I
