“Terms (you must really forgive my outspokenness) from a cut-purse and a cut-throat?—terms from one who has no shadow of a title to the gem, or, even if he had, has attempted to enforce it by means ridiculously illegal? Upon my word, sir, for a school-master——!”
Brander waved a tolerant but extremely dirty hand.
“I will question you, Mr. Tuke,” he said. “Why am I a cut-throat?”
“Ah! had I been a scholar of yours, I might answer, maybe.”
“A mere veil of satire to conceal a paucity of proof. Why, sir, why, I ask?”
“You are insistent. Shall we suggest—apart from reasonable surmise as to your general career—that you had a hand, say twenty years ago, in the murder of a colleague under these very gallows?”
“Twenty years ago I was acting usher at a school.”
“Oh! we won’t be particular to a day or two.”
Mr. Brander straddled his legs, knuckled one fist upon his hip under his coat-skirt, and with his other hand rasped his chin meditatively.
“Well,” said he, “give a dog a bad name. ’Tis all of second importance. Only, being so, ’tis scarce worth an untruth. Sir, I regard lies as strong waters—the more regularly indulged in, the weaker is their effect when needed. This is no particular occasion for one. I had no hand in the man Cutwater’s death. I had not then any shadowy knowledge, even, of the great stone or the concealment of it that brought about his fate.”