“Bless your little heart, Audrey, your anger does me good! Upon my word, when they all looked at me as they did, and questioned me as they did, and put it to me that I must have been to blame somehow or other in this awful business, I—I—I almost began to think, at last, that I had!”
“Gerard! How can you?”
“Well, it came upon me so suddenly, so unexpectedly, you know, that I felt as if the heavens had fallen, or that I must be somebody else. I could only stare, and stammer, and behave, I suppose, just as a thorough-paced rascal would have done!”
“Oh, Gerard!”
“Well, I couldn’t help it. I was struck dumb.”
“You should have been indignant. You should have told them what you thought of them!”
“Well, I couldn’t. I was too much occupied with what they thought of me!”
“Tell me just what they said.”
“Well, they asked me who it was that took Sir Richmond his last cheque-book down. I said it was I. Then they asked me when it was, and if I remembered any of the circumstances of the journey. And after a little help—for I’ve been down there so often on one errand or another that it was difficult to find the exact date—I found that it was on a Saturday that I took the cheque-book, and that I came back home to have luncheon on my way. Then came a torrent of questions as to the time I stayed in the flat, and as to the people in it, and so on. They wanted to know whether any one was in the flat except you and me. There wasn’t, was there?”
Audrey was too much disturbed to remember. But the two set their memories to work, and consulted the servant who formed the whole of their modest staff, and finally they ascertained that, if anybody but themselves had been in the flat on the particular Saturday in question, it was either old Mrs. Webster, a neighbour, or Mr. Candover, a rich friend who had a handsome flat in Victoria Street, and who sometimes brought his motor-car round on Saturdays to take them for a spin into the country.