'I do not,' I cried, crimson. 'I never saw the Count before that morning.'
He tried another tack. 'Still, wherever you went, this man Higginson—the only other person, you admit, who knows about the previous existence of the will—turned up simultaneously. He was always turning up—at the same place as you did. He turned up at Lucerne, as a faith-healer, didn't he?'
'If you will allow me to explain,' I cried, biting my lip.
He bowed, all blandness. 'Oh, certainly,' he murmured. 'Explain away everything!'
I explained, but of course he had discounted and damaged my explanation.
He made no comment. 'And then,' he went on, with his hands on his hips, and his obtrusive rotundity, 'he turned up at Florence, as courier to Mr. Ashurst, at the very date when this so-called will was being concocted?'
'He was at Florence when Mr. Ashurst dictated it to me,' I answered, growing desperate.
'You admit he was in Florence. Good! Once more he turned up in India with my client, Lord Southminster, upon whose youth and inexperience he had managed to impose himself. And he carried him off, did he not, by one of these strange coincidences to which you are peculiarly liable, on the very same steamer on which you happened to be travelling?'
'Lord Southminster told me he took Higginson with him because a rogue suited his book,' I answered, warmly.
'Will you swear his lordship didn't say "the rogue suited his book"—which is quite another thing?' the Q.C. asked blandly.