Was it with design, too, that throughout breakfast Chandler should so persistently keep dragging round the conversation to the year 1868? It looked like it. Nor was there any mistaking, either, the constraint in the manner of others. Well, if they intended that sort of annoyance they should learn that they might just as well spare themselves the trouble.
Thus musing he went down to the office. A few Court cases had to be disposed of, during which from his seat in front of the bench he could see Tasker, the agent, who bore him no goodwill either, ostentatiously sketching a gallows on his blotting pad. Darrell was absent, having returned to the Main Camp.
“Would you mind stepping this way, Mr Musgrave?” said Mr Shaston, when the court had risen, leading the way into his private office. “Sit down, please. There is a matter of very serious moment on which I should like a little conversation with you. Perhaps it will save a great deal of explanation, and beating around the bush, if we come to the point at once. In a word, this has come under my notice—no matter how—and if you have any explanation to offer I shall be glad to hear it.”
“This” being the file of the Bryonville Sentinel open at the report of the Stillwell’s Flat case. Roden took it, and looked at it hard and earnestly—his own portrait, lifelike at the present day, the sensational headlines, the equivocal verdict, the acquittal.
This, then, was how the matter had been unearthed; for as he glanced at the paper he recalled old Dr Simpson’s hobby. That kindly-natured old man would not have stirred a finger to harm him. It was Lambert who had unearthed this, Lambert whom he had to thank. Ten long years ago! and now here, in another hemisphere thousands and thousands of miles away, this blood-spectre sprang up once more, hideous and blighting.
“Well?” said Shaston, as he handed it back.
“I have no explanation to offer.”
“Do I understand then that you admit your identity with the—er—the person, whose trial is here reported?”
“You will please understand that I admit nothing. I do not feel in the least called upon to make either admissions or explanations. I will, however, just add this remark. The person, whoever he may be, whose trial is there reported, appears to have been acquitted. That means, I take it, that he has been cleared of the charge.”
“All very well as a legal fiction, Mr Musgrave,” was the icy rejoinder; “but you and I know perfectly that the manner of a person’s acquittal makes all the difference in the world.”