"I know you didn't, again: but I'm combing out your brains for you, if you'll only stand quiet and not interrupt. Keep your mind fixed on Whitmore. Whitmore's your man. If Hodgson catches him—"
"If Hodgson catches him, he'll be charged with the murder. I've the warrant in my pocket. Then how are we to hide the boy, or keep any silence on what has happened here to-night?"
"Ye dunderhead!" Miss Belcher stamped her foot. "What in the name of fortune have we to do with the murder? If Hodgson catches him, he'll be charged with forging the Bishop of Exeter's licence: that's to say with a crime he's already confessed to you. If you want to hang him, that'll do it. You don't want to hang him twice over, do you? And I don't reckon he'll be so anxious to be hanged twice that he'll confess to a murder for the fun of the thing. If you say nothing, he'll say nothing. Upon my word you seem to have that Jew on the brain! Who made out the warrant?"
"I, of course."
"Then keep it in your pocket: and when you get home, burn it. It beats me to think why you can't let that murder alone. Rodriguez was no friend of yours, was he? You can't bring him to life again, can you? And what's your evidence? A couple of marked coins? Barring us few here, who knows of them? Nobody. Barring us few here, who knows a whisper beside, to connect Whitmore with the murder? Nobody again. Very well, then: you came here to-night to expose Whitmore as a false priest and a forger. You took the villain on the hop, and he confessed: so the boy's evidence is not needed. Having confessed, he made his escape. You can say, if you will, that I helped him. That's all you need remember, and what more d'ye want? It's odds against Hodgson catching him. It's all Lombard Street to a china orange against his bothering you, if caught, with any plea but Guilty." She ceased, panting with her flow of words.
"Well, but about this Leicester?" Mr. Rogers objected.
"What about him? Let him go. Isabel was right in begging him off— though you did it, my dear, for other reasons than mine: but when the heart's right, God bless you, it usually speaks common sense. Let him go. D'ye want to hang him? He's ugly enough, but I don't see how you're to do it, unless first of all you catch Whitmore and then force him to turn cat-in-the-pan, at the risk of his talking too much and with the certainty of dragging Isabel into the exposure. Even so, I doubt you'll get evidence. This man is a deal too shrewd to have done any of the forging himself. If Whitmore had known enough to hang him, Whitmore wouldn't have gone in awe of him. And what Whitmore don't know, Whitmore can't tell."
All this while the prisoner had kept absolute silence; had stood motionless, except that his eyes turned from one speaker to another, and now and then seemed to seek Archibald Plinlimmon's—who, however, refused to return the look. But now he twisted his battered mouth into something like an appreciative grin.
"Bravo, Madam!" said he. "You've the wits of the company, if you'll take my compliments."
"I misdoubt they're interested ones," she answered drily, and so addressed herself again to Mr. Rogers. "Let the man go: you've drawn his sting. If ever he opens his mouth on to-night's work, we've a plum or two to pop into it. If Mr. Plinlimmon chooses to take him at the door and horsewhip him, I say nothing against it. Indeed he's welcome to the loan of my hunting-crop."