"If I could find him," she cried between her teeth, "I would accuse him of perjury. For he did perjure himself. He came into Rupert's sitting-room just after I had altered the cheque. I was holding it in my hand just underneath my glove, and he saw it there and asked what it was. I believe after I left the room he must have seen the marks on the blotting-pad. Things I had forgotten at the time, things he said, returned to me afterwards when it was too late. He knows, but he won't speak."
"Gently, gently," Jim said, taking her arm and making her sit down. "We must help you, my father and I. We'll force Mr. Despard to speak—we must clear Rupert's name if——"
"There's no if!" she cried.
"You realise that if we clear him it means that you take his place? You will be sent to prison."
She seized his hands and looked into his eyes. "For me, the day I enter prison and he is pardoned, will be the first happy day I shall have known since Rupert was arrested. I love him."
CHAPTER XXV.
AN EXCITING TIME.
Singapore!
The chain rattled through the hausehole with a deafening roar, and the great ship swung at anchor in the Roads.
A tropical sun beat fiercely down on the awnings, and Rupert Dale, leaning over the rail, gazed shorewards at the great plain framed in cocoanut palms—the Cathedral spire rising white and dazzling out of the green, fan-like leaves. To the left the brown slopes of Fort Canning, crowned with its giant flagstaff and fluttering flags. Round the ship a score or more of sampans tossed and jostled each other in the sparkling sea, their copper-skinned owners—naked to the loins—gesticulating and shouting in a language which sounded harsh and vehement to his unaccustomed ears. A strong, pungent odour of hot spice in which cinnamon predominated filled the air, while kites and eagles wheeled and swooped round him above the dancing waves.