“No matter. Then you roll up here, and suggest that I am wanted as the murderer of some unknown Jew, whose top end appears to have been found in the Makanya bush. You know, if I were less good-natured, you might get into serious trouble over such a thing as that. You insinuated it in the presence of the Halses, too.”
“Meaning an action for slander, I suppose. Go ahead. I defy you to bring it. Do you hear? I defy you to bring it.”
“It isn’t worth while. Still, if you go on spreading these stories all over the country I may be compelled to. It’s one thing to make accusations, but quite another to prove them. To prove them,” he repeated emphatically, with his eyes full upon the other’s, and a sudden hard ring coming into his tone with the last words.
Inwardly Stride was conscious of his first misgiving in the matter. He was as certain in his own mind that the man before him had, for some reason or other, killed the one, part of whose remains had been found, as that the sun shone. But between certainty and proof was a far cry. He was not lawyer enough to know that in such a case as this any evidence that could be got together would be of the circumstantial kind, and not necessarily conclusive, and he had come here with the express object of frightening Denham out of the country altogether. Instead he had found that Denham was not the sort of man to be frightened at all.
“Oh, the proof’ll come right enough,” he answered, with an easiness that was more than half affected. Then seriously, “Look here, you know I’ve no reason exactly to belove you?”
Instantly Denham’s tone softened.
“I think I can guess,” he said, “and cannot but be sorry. But that is all in the fair chances of life. How can I help it?”
“Help it? Damn ‘helping it,’” was the furious reply. “But now, look here. I—with others—am going to make it the business of life to bring this thing home to you. We shall hunt up every scrap and particle of evidence of your movements since you first landed, your every movement. There’s one chance for you and it the last. Clear out—now, at once.”
“Now, really, you make me laugh. Is it in the least likely?”
“What is in the least likely?”