“That was the secret Sir John tried to protect for you?”
Again there was no answer.
“Now, once again I ask you: Was not the letter you have produced given to Evangeline Stableford, and wasn’t the trust created for her benefit?”
Tempest hesitated, and then sat down; but the witness had fainted. Barnett, K. C., rose, and remarked that he felt he had no alternative consistent with the dignity of his profession but to retire from the case, and his junior did the same. The judge adjourned, and the court slowly emptied.
With a grave face Tempest returned to his chambers.
Baxter and Marston joined him in the corridor, and the three men walked in silence across New Square.
“Come along in. I know a great deal more than you do, and I’m at my wits’ end what to do,” said the barrister. Handing his wig and gown to his clerk he lighted a cigarette, and backwards and forwards he paced along the narrow pathway across his carpet.
“I ought to have done it, but I simply couldn’t. Very few people in court could know all the facts. It’s simply a coincidence that all of them happen to have come into my hands. The chances can be only one in a thousand that such a thing could happen. The two Manuel girls were the two sisters Alvarez, and to-day Lady Rellingham has given the explanation of the whole thing. Do you remember the suicide of Dolores Alvarez twenty years ago?”
“Yes, I remember something of it. It was a nine days’ wonder at the time.”
“That’s Dolores,” said Tempest, as he pointed to the painted miniature over the mantelpiece. “I was in that case, and it has always puzzled me. You remember she was found dead in her flat—stark nude on the bed, and by the side an opened bottle of champagne, with prussic acid in the glass? The evidence was that her sister, Lady Madeley, called; that she sent her maid out; that the maid came back, found Lady Madeley gone, and her mistress at once sent her out again, and the maid came back to find the dead body of Dolores. The coroner’s verdict was suicide. Now, I’ve puzzled over that for twenty years. Then comes the death of Evangeline Stableford—the body found nude at the Charing Cross Hotel, and again the opened bottle of champagne and prussic acid; and then there was the utterly marvellous likeness between Dolores and Evangeline. But they could not be mother and daughter, for Dolores had never had a child, and I had always assumed Evangeline could not be the daughter of Lady Madeley, because she was born on the day Lord and Lady Madeley were married. It never dawned on me that the two sisters changed places.”