After a moment or two he looked up. "You should be more careful where you blot your letters," he said simply. "You will notice that the impression upon the blotting-paper is not complete—though they obviously tally."
Speechless with terror, she made a sudden snatch at the sheet in the blotter which she had already begun to tear out when his entrance disturbed her.
He caught her by the wrist. "No," he said, very quietly and sternly. "I thought you would do that. I saw you trying to do it when I came in just now. Now, look here—look at the photograph and at the representation of your writing in the mirror. Have you any doubt that the impression upon the blotting-paper is the impression made by the blotting of that letter?"
"And if it is," she said, in one last faint effort, "what does that prove? Why should not you have written it and blotted it?"
"Because, my dear Alice," he replied, "I have not been in this house until this afternoon for six months. Listen! To-day the judge dropped a remark about the importance of finding the paper on which this letter was blotted. You alone knew where it was. Very well, in the sequence of events, Pauline found you here—the first moment the room was empty—with a cock-and-bull story about your bag. A few minutes later I, having heard this from Pauline, find you in the act of destroying this damning evidence—see, it's half torn out already. Come, the game's up."
Aristocrat as she was, something low, vulgar, and malignantly mocking came out upon Lady Attwill's face as Collingwood said this.
"Is it?" she said. "Do you think I am afraid of you and your game of bluff? You have forgotten the important link in your chain. How do you explain the discrepancy in the writing? That writing is not mine."
"Isn't it?" he asked quietly.
"No!" she almost shouted. "A pretty conspiracy!—to damn me and save Peggy Admaston. Why shouldn't Pauline have written it?"
Up to this he had listened to her with some patience. Now his face blazed at her for a moment. He sat down in the writing-chair, pulling it up to the table as he did so. "I'll show you," he said. "Sit down there."