"Some quiet place where I shall not be known."
"You really would not like the Café Royal?" I asked. "Nothing will happen to you, and I think you would probably find that one or two people would wish you luck. You have had a rare bad time, and there must be some people who understand what you have gone through and know that it is sufficient punishment for any sin."
"No, Frank," he persisted, "I cannot, I really cannot."
At length we decided on a restaurant in Great Portland Street. We drove there and had a private room.
I had two purposes in me, springing from the one root, the intense desire to help him. I felt sure that if the case came up again for trial he would only be convicted through what I may call good, honest testimony. The jury with their English prejudice; or rather I should say with their healthy English instincts would not take the evidence of vile blackmailers against him; he could only be convicted through untainted evidence such as the evidence of the chambermaids at the Savoy Hotel, and their evidence was over two years old and was weak, inasmuch as the facts, if facts, were not acted upon by the management. Still their testimony was very clear and very positive, and, taken together with that of the blackmailers, sufficient to ensure conviction. After our lunch I laid this view before Oscar. He agreed with me that it was probably the chambermaids' testimony which had weighed most heavily against him. Their statement and Shelley's had brought about the injurious tone in the Judge's summing up. The Judge himself had admitted as much.
"The chambermaids' evidence is wrong," Oscar declared. "They are mistaken, Frank. It was not me they spoke about at the Savoy Hotel. It was ——. I was never bold enough. I went to see —— in the morning in his room."
"Thank God," I said, "but why didn't Sir Edward Clarke bring that out?"
"He wanted to; but I would not let him. I told him he must not. I must be true to my friend. I could not let him."
"But he must," I said, "at any rate if he does not I will. I have three weeks and in that three weeks I am going to find the chambermaid. I am going to get a plan of your room and your friend's room, and I'm going to make her understand that she was mistaken. She probably remembered you because of your size: she mistook you for the guilty person; everybody has always taken you for the ringleader and not the follower."