Something in the older man’s attitude of continued disbelief seemed to have the effect of nettling Vaughan. “How many times,” he said, with a note of irritation in his tone, “must I repeat it? I tell you I know. Can’t a man trust his own eyes? It was Jack. There’s no room for doubt at all. Don’t you suppose—” his voice rose with the strain of all that he had been through—“don’t you suppose that I’d have jumped at any chance to clear him? Don’t you suppose that if there’d been the faintest shadow of a doubt in his favor, I’d have stretched it to the breaking point to see him go free. No, there’s no question. It was Jack. Why he did it, or how he did it, you can conjecture, if you wish, but one thing is plain. Murder Tom Satterlee he did.”
His tone rang true. At last, in spite of himself, Carleton appeared unwillingly to be convinced. Again he pondered. “Then he perjured himself at the inquest?” he said quickly at last.
Vaughan nodded. “He perjured himself at the inquest,” he assented.
“And you?” asked Carleton, again, “you perjured yourself too?”
“I perjured myself too,” Vaughan answered. “There were plenty of other reasons, of course; reasons that you can imagine. It wasn’t just a case of Jack alone. There was a lot else to think of besides. We talked it over as well as we could—Jack and I. We thought of you. We thought of Rose—and of me. We thought of the Carleton name. The disgrace of it all. We only had a quarter of an hour, at the most—and we lied, deliberately and consciously lied.”
He looked up, instantly amazed at the look on Carleton’s face, for Carleton was gazing at him as if he could scarcely believe his ears—as if this piece of news, for some reason, came as something more unexpected than all the rest. “You talked it over with Jack?” he said, “talked it over with Jack, and Jack thought of me—and the family name. Upon my word, Arthur, I believe one of us is mad.”
Vaughan stared at him, uncomprehending. “I don’t see why you say that,” he returned. “What was there more natural? Or do you mean Jack wasn’t sincere when he put that forward as a reason? I’ve thought of that, but I don’t believe it now. Just think how we should feel if instead of sitting here and theorizing about it, we knew that the facts were really public property. Do you wonder that we stopped to consider everything? Do you wonder that we decided as we did? But we were wrong—all wrong—I knew it, really, all the time. To tell what I saw—that was the only honest thing to do. I lied, and now I’m going to try to make amends. I’m going to tell the truth, no matter what comes. It’s the only way.”
Impatiently Henry Carleton shook his head. “I don’t agree with you, in the least,” he said quickly. “I think you decided rightly. I should have done the same. And right or wrong, you’ve made your choice. Why alter it now? It would make the scandal of the day.”
“I know it,” Vaughan desperately assented, “I know it will. But anything’s better than having things go on as they are now. I can’t look people in the face. I’ve been miserable. I thought I knew what it was to be badly off before, but poverty, and bad luck, and failure—what are they, anyway? What do they amount to? Nothing. But a thing like this on your conscience. Why, a man’s better dead. He can’t live with it, day and night. He can’t; that’s all. I know. He’s got to tell, or go crazy; it isn’t to be endured.”
Without making answer, Henry Carleton rose, and walked over to the window, standing precisely as he had stood before Vaughan’s coming, gazing out into the blackness of the night. Then he turned. “Wait here,” he said peremptorily. “I’ve got to get to the bottom of this, or you won’t be the one to lose your senses. Wait here. I’ll be back in half an hour, at the very latest.”