“Civility, you old fool! If words could blister him, I’d ransack hell’s language for them till he curled and shrivelled up before me.”
“Well,” said the gentleman reasonably, “you’re not improving your case, you know, by all this.”
“My case!” cried the other. “I’ve got none. It was always a gamble, and I knew it well enough from the first. But I’d have pulled it through, if it hadn’t been for him—I’d have pulled it through and hanged my fine gentleman—his son there—as sure as there’s a God of Vengeance in the world.”
He wrenched himself in the hold that gripped him, and, bare-chested, snarling like a dog in a leash, flung forward to denounce the father:—
“Curse you, do you hear? I’d have ruined and hanged that whelp of yours as surely as he ruined and murdered the girl that was mine till he debauched and stole her from me. When I put the shot into her, it was as truly his hand that fired it as if his finger had pulled on the trigger. She’d betrayed me, and it was him that led her to it, and by doing so made himself responsible for the consequences.”
The Inspector thought it right here to utter the usual official warning. It was curious to note in his tone, as he did so, a suspicion of deference, almost of apology, such as might characterise a schoolboy forced to bear witness against his headmaster. Ridgway turned on him with a jeering oath:—
“You can save your breath, Cully. That devil spoke true. It was I killed Ivy Mellor; and him, that old dog’s son, that ought to hang for it.”
M. le Baron spoke up: “Is it necessary to go further, gentlemen, since he confesses to the double crime?”
“I think not,” said the Chief Constable. “Remove him, Inspector.”
The three closed about the prisoner, who submitted quietly to being taken away. But he forced a stop a moment as he passed by Sir Calvin—who, greatly overcome, had sunk into a chair, the Baron leaning above him—and spoke, with some faint return to reason and self-control:—