"Leicester!" she cried, with a voice, whose tones baffle all description. "Leicester! I have been asleep—dreaming. Oh, horrible dreams! Wake me, Leicester, my darling, wake me!"
There was a rush and confusion as she fainted. The door opened, and Ethel and Bertie ran in.
Then there was such a handshaking and kissing, and such terrible excitement, that for the moment the cause of all the terrible crimes and trouble was forgotten.
He saw the moment, and slipped something small and composed of glass from his pocket.
Scarcely had he done so when Mr. Dockett and Giles had seized his arms.
He struggled for a moment, then, as the group round Leicester and Violet, sobbing and crying and laughing and talking, turned to confront him, he suddenly stood still, and the old daring smile flitted across his livid face.
"You are mad, all of you!" he said. "You think because your idiot is back and the secret is out that you have done for me forever. But you are wrong. I know something of law. I am rich, and I will set you at defiance! You talk of robberies, of smuggling, of forgery, of murder! Bah! where is the motive for it all? Convict me of forgery upon the evidence of one man? You cannot! Convict me of murder upon such evidence as you hold? Impossible! I laugh at you! I am Captain Howard Murpoint, a respectable officer in her majesty's service! Why should I kill my servant, James Starling? Beware! Lay me by the heels, and I can and will give evidence sufficiently strong to hang that idiot!"
And he pointed to Leicester, from whom all sense but that of gratitude for the possession of his darling seemed to have passed.
"I can hang him, and I will, for I dare you to show why I should murder my servant, James Starling!"
At that moment the door opened and a short, little man in a costermonger's cap entered.