“You had better sit down.”
The man relapsed gratefully into a chair.
“I'll leave out everything that doesn't count, sir,” he said. “I'll be as brief as I can. I want you to go back to the night I waited upon you at dinner the night Mr. Oliver Hilditch was found dead. You gave evidence. The jury brought it in 'suicide.' It wasn't suicide at all, sir. Mr. Hilditch was murdered.”
The sense of horror against which he had been struggling during the last few hours, crept once more through the whole being of the man who listened. He was face to face once more with that terrible issue. Had he perjured himself in vain? Was the whole structure of his dreams about to collapse, to fall about his ears?
“By whom?” he faltered.
“By Sir Timothy Brast, sir.”
Francis, who had been standing with his hand upon the table, felt suddenly inclined to laugh. Facile though his brain was, the change of issues was too tremendous for him to readily assimilate it. He picked up a cigarette from an open box, with shaking fingers, lit it, and threw himself into an easy-chair. He was all the time quite unconscious of what he was doing.
“Sir Timothy Brast?” he repeated.
“Yes, sir,” the man reiterated. “I wish to tell you the whole story.”
“I am listening,” Francis assured him.