"I would. Every man for himself in this world. I would have told him, whosoever he was, that if he did not give me back the bill I would denounce him to the police. But I have not the least idea who the guilty person is." He wiped his face. "And all these years I have lived in misery, fearing daily and hourly that the bill would turn up. I knew Roper would not spare me if he got possession of it."
"No wonder," remarked Heron, "seeing how badly you treated his daughter Elsa."
The culprit had the grace to blush. "Elsa Roper was never a penny the worse by me," he said. "When I used to go to her father's office to procure money she chose to fall in love with me. I made capital out of that, as I do out of most things."
"Don't be so shameless, man!" interposed his brother-in-law, sharply. Marshall sickened him with his fluent villainy.
"Oh, you were always a Puritan," sneered Marshall. "However, that is neither here nor there. I let the girl believe that I cared for her in order to get her father to part with his money, but I never intended to marry her."
"And she died of a broken heart," put in Heron.
"So the old man says. As though a woman ever died of such a thing! She caught a chill, and was carried off because she was not sufficiently well nourished; that is the truth, although old Roper prefers to put it down to me. If he had fed her better she would be alive now. But he chooser to think I killed her, and would do me a serious injury it he could. I am glad the bill did not fall into his hands. Where did you get it?" he asked, turning to Geoffrey. "Or if you can tell me the name of the person who had it I can tell you who was the assassin of Jenner. Oh, it is quite true. Jenner shewed me the bill that night by the Waggoner's Pond. I would have taken it by force, but he was stronger than I; there was no chance of my getting the better of him. But I noticed that he took it out of a red pocket-book. Now, that pocket-book was never produced at the trial, so the assassin must have it."
"Then you don't think Mrs. Jenner killed him?"
"She? She wouldn't have killed a fly. No, she did not kill him. If she had, that red pocket-book would have been produced in court. I have been living in fear ever since, wondering who had it, though I always intended to make use of the murder should the assassin have tried to blackmail me. Who did you get the bill from, Heron?"
"I did not got it from anyone. Jenner evidently thought that you might come after him to steal it, so, according to his wife, he sewed it up in the body of a toy horse with which his child had been playing. Lately Neil wished to give this toy to George Chisel, so it came into Ruth's possession. The boy cut it open, and Miss Brawn found the bill. She gave it to me and I at once saw Roper about it. Besides, I read up my father's diary and found that his name had been forged."