"So I did.--"
"Oh, Lord!" cried Herrick in a tone of disgust "will you never be done with your petty falsehoods. I know that you have not seen the solicitors for some months--certainly not on the twenty-fourth of July. Frith told me how you tried to get your mother's annuity transferred to yourself. Come now! Don't play the fool with me. You did not sleep at the Hull hotel?"
"How do you know that?"
"Because I went there. And I know also that you alighted from the seven train at Heathcroft station, and rode on your bicycle to Saxham--'I don't know for what purpose, unless it was to kill the Colonel."
"No! No!" this time Joyce was really afraid. "I did not kill him!"
"That remains to be proved. What about that pistol you slipped into the drawer of Bess Endicotte's writing-table--now, you are about to lie again! It won't do;---it won't do. The truth, you rat of a man."
"Don't call names," muttered Joyce weakly.
"I beg your pardon. I will not call you any more names. Let us conduct this conversation calmly. But you have to tell me the whole truth, or---"
"Well," said Joyce defiantly, "and if I refuse? What then."
"I will hand you over to the Beorminster police."