His head sank low. I thought, for all my warning, I had risked too much. But in a moment he lifted it again, and the expression on it, stern, white, self-repressed, was such, I imagined, as might have marked its character when, in past days, he would rise, black-capped, to sentence a prisoner to the last awful penalty.
“On what authority,” he began, in a quick loud voice, which sank even upon its utterance—“on what authority?”—and the words died out in a whisper.
“On the authority, sir,” I said, “of a man who was in hiding near by at the time the crime was committed, and who sought afterwards, on the strength of his secret, to bleed the murderer’s pocket, as the murderer has since, on another count, sought to bleed your wife’s. But he proved himself no match against a desperate villain’s resourcefulness; and was caught in the net of his own spreading, and put away for years on a trumped-up charge. You will find his name there—Geoletti.”
Lord Skene looked up at me, and laughed—a painful, twisted, unnatural cachinnation.
“I had observed it already, Richard. I sentenced the man myself—good God!”
He buried his face in his hands, as if overwhelmed. And, indeed, the coincidence was staggering.
“Is that so, sir?” I said in a strained dry voice. “Well, it only remains to say that he has served his sentence to the hilt, and has emerged from it with one only purpose remaining to his ruined life—revenge on the author of his sufferings.”
I felt the question coming from him, and forestalled it.
“How I know this? The man had tracked his quarry home, and I came upon him, quite by chance, foundered by the way. But when he told me his name—great God, sir, I remembered the letter—your son’s letter—and then only a little questioning was needed to extract the whole accursed truth.”
“Where is he?”