"You beast!" said Pentreddle, gritting his teeth. "You told a lie."
"Martha would not have admitted me if I had not done so. She got me into the room, and then I insisted that she should give the emerald."
"She hadn't got it."
"She wouldn't confess that she hadn't. Perhaps she feared lest I should intercept her messenger, Miss Carrol, on the way home, and rob her of the jewel. At all events, she gave me to understand nothing, and I really believed that the emerald was in her pocket. I tried to get it; then she brought out that damned stiletto and stabbed at me. I wrested it from her and in the struggle somehow I drove it into her throat."
"You intended to!" shouted the Squire, rising to shake his two clenched hands over the criminal.
"I swear I did not," panted Dane; "it was really an accident. When I saw what I had done I grew afraid. I thought that I heard someone outside----"
"So you did," interrupted Harry sharply; "It was the watching priest."
"If I'd known," Theodore scowled, and his eyes gleamed in a most murderous manner. "But I didn't. I saw that Martha was dead or dying, and opened the window to throw the stiletto into the area. Then I searched her clothing for the emerald and afterwards the bedrooms."
"Oh! And you say you did not murder her?" raged the Squire.
"Not intentionally. I swear that I did not. But seeing that she was dead, it was just as well to hunt for what I wanted. I found nothing, so I came down and got out by the window. Just outside the gate someone--that infernal priest as I now know--snatched at my shoulder and grabbed my scarf. I slipped him in the fog and--and--that's all."