"Are you sure? are you sure?"
"Oh!" Lister's tone was highly exasperated. "You will drive me mad, talking in this way. Hearken," he added, speaking calmer, "when I left you and Captain Huxham in the corn-field, I went straight back to my lodgings. There I found a letter referring to the thousand pounds I wished to borrow. I had to see the friend who was willing to lend it to me on that night. I therefore went to London by the six o'clock train. My landlady can prove that I left the house; the flyman can prove that I drove to the local station; the ticket office there that I bought a ticket, and the guard of the train shut me himself in a first-class compartment. That is evidence enough, I fancy."
"Yes. Yes, for me, but——"
"But I might have sneaked back, I suppose you mean?" he said bitterly, and rising to walk the floor. "I can prove an alibi easily. At eight o'clock I was at my friend's rooms in Duke Street, St. James's, as his man can swear. He had gone to Paris, and I arranged to follow. I went to the theatre, and to dinner with two friends of mine, and did not leave them until one in the morning, when I returned to my hotel. The murder took place at eleven, or between eight and eleven, so I can easily prove that I was not here. Next morning I went to Paris, and got the money from my friend. I lingered there with him, and only returned yesterday, to learn that your father was dead. Then I came down here this morning to—meet with this reception."
"Cyril! Cyril! Don't be hard on me."
"Are you not hard yourself?" he retorted. "How can I love a woman who doubts me? Besides, robbery was the motive for the commission of the crime. Am I likely to stab an old man, and then rob him?"
"No, I never believed, and yet——"
"And yet what?" he asked curtly.
"You—you—wanted a thousand pounds."
"Oh"—his lip curled—"and you believed that I robbed your father's safe to get it. Unfortunately, I understood, from your aunt's evidence at the inquest, that only one hundred pounds in gold were in the safe, so I must have committed a brutal murder needlessly."