"You--you can't prove it is Harold's," said he, white but calm.
"Easily. Here is a silver plate on the butt with his name. Now, what do you say?"
"That my brother is innocent. The revolver is his, but some one else fired the shot."
Van Zwieten shrugged his shoulders. "I am afraid you will find it difficult to get a jury to take that view, Mr. Burton. Your brother quarrelled with Malet--he was overheard to threaten him--he was out in the storm and could not account for his time--and here is his revolver. With all that evidence I could hang him. But you know--well, I'll be generous. Hold your tongue and I'll hold mine. What do you say?"
Wilfred looked piercingly at Van Zwieten, who had dropped his bantering tone and was in earnest. "Harold is innocent," said he, "but--I'll hold my tongue."
[CHAPTER XV.]
THE GIRL HE LEFT BEHIND HIM.
When Wilfred had taken his departure, Van Zwieten drew a breath of relief. He had only escaped a great danger by virtue of his ready resource and the excitability and hot-headed impulsiveness of his adversary.
Without doubt Wilfred's plan--and a harum-scarum plan it was--had been to decoy him into an ambush of police, on the pretence of selling him the so-called State papers, and when he had irretrievably betrayed himself, to have had him arrested as a spy. Thanks only to his skill in penetrating the disguise of his visitor, Van Zwieten had evaded this peril; but he had been in greater danger than even Wilfred knew.
The papers in the iron box were sufficient to prove him a spy ten times over. Had Wilfred only been astute enough to have procured a search warrant on the evidence of Mazaroff, and with the assistance of the police to have raided the premises of the so-called Mr. Jones, these papers would have been discovered, and Mr. van Zwieten's little games put an end to for the time being.