“I will take your case, Ranelagh. God help me to make it good against all odds.”
I was conscious of few hopes, but some of the oppression under which I laboured lifted at those words. I had assured one man of my innocence! It was like a great rock in the weary desert. My sigh of relief bespoke my feelings and I longed to take his hand, but the moment had not yet come. Something was wanting to a perfect confidence between us, and I was in too sensitive a frame of mind to risk the slightest rebuff.
He was ready to speak before I was. “Then, you had not been long on the scene of crime when the police arrived?”
“I had been in the room but a few minutes. I do not know how long I was searching the house.”
“The police say that fully twenty minutes elapsed between the time they received Miss Cumberland’s appeal for help and their arrival at the club-house. If you were there that long—”
“I cannot say. Moments are hours at such a crisis—I—”
My emotions were too much for me, and I confusedly stopped. He was surveying me with the old distrust. In a moment I saw why.
“You are not open with me,” he protested. “Why should moments be hours to you previous to the instant when you stripped those pillows from the couch? You are not a fanciful man, nor have you any cowardly instincts. Why were you in such a turmoil going through a house where you could have expected to find nothing worse than some miserable sneak thief?”
This was a poser. I had laid myself open to suspicion by one thoughtless admission, and what was worse, it was but the beginning in all probability of many other possible mistakes. I had never taken the trouble to measure my words and the whole truth being impossible, I necessarily must make a slip now and then. He had better be warned of this. I did not wish him to undertake my cause blindfolded. He must understand its difficulties while believing in my innocence. Then, if he chose to draw back, well and good. I should have to face the situation alone.
“Charles,” said I, as soon as I could perfectly control my speech, “you are quite just in your remark. I am not and can not be perfectly open with you. I shall tell you no lies, but beyond that I cannot promise. I am caught in a net not altogether of my own weaving. So far I will be frank with you. A common question may trip me up, others find me free and ready with my defence. You have chanced upon one of the former. I was in a turmoil of mind from the moment of my entrance into that fatal house, but I can give no reason for it unless I am, as you hinted, a coward.”