"I accuse you," Alan answered, steadily, "of having played the part of common spy; of having composed, if you did not write, two anonymous letters to Lady Mildred and her daughter; afterwards, of having maligned a woman whom you never spoke to, by causing her handwriting to be forged; of having made a dear friend of mine, a gentleman of birth and breeding, unwittingly your accomplice, when he was brought so low that the Tempter himself might have spared him; of having done me, and perhaps my cousin, a mortal injury, when neither of us had ever hurt you by word or deed. I accuse you of having done all this for hire, for the specific sum of £5,000, paid you by Lord Clydesdale within a month after your villany was consummated. You need not trouble yourself to contradict one syllable of this, unless you choose to lie for the pleasure of lying. I have the written proofs here."
Knowles's head went down lower and lower while Wyverne was speaking; when he raised his face, it was fantastically convulsed and horribly livid, like one of those that we see in the illustrations to the Inferno, besetting the path of the travellers through the penal Circles. He was too anxious to escape from his torture, to protract it by a single vain denial; but he would not throw one chance of palliation away.
"It was not a bribe," he gasped out, "it was a regular bet. Look, I can show it you."
He drew his tablets out and tore them open with a shaking hand; and, after finding the page with great difficulty, pointed it out to Wyverne.
The latter just glanced at the entry, and cast down the book with crushing contempt.
"Five thousand to fifty," he said; "I've been long enough on the turf to construe those odds. The veriest robber in the ring would not have dared to show your 'regular bet.' Now, answer me one question—'How far was Clydesdale cognizant of your plot?'"
"He has never heard one word of it, up to this moment," the other answered, eagerly. "I swear it. You may make any inquiries you like. I can defy you there. But some one else did know of it, and approved it too; that was——"
Wyverne's tone changed savagely as he broke in.
"Will you confine yourself to answering the questions you are asked? I don't want any confessions volunteered, I attach no real importance to them, after all; but it grates on one to hear people maligned unnecessarily. Now, I'll tell you what I mean to do about it. I thought at first of inducing you to cross the Channel, and giving you a chance of your life against mine there; but I gave that up, because I knew you would not come. Then I thought—a brutal, last resource—of beating you into a cripple, here. I gave that up, because I never could thrash a dog that lay down at the first cut, writhing and howling; I know so well that would have been your line. Do you want to say anything?"
A sudden change in Harding's countenance made Alan pause. You may have seen how utterly deficient he was both in moral and physical courage; but the last faint embers of manhood smouldered into sullen flame, under the accumulation of insult. He had risen to his feet with a dark devilish malice on his face, and made a step towards a table near him.