Again there was silence, until at last Levison, the Jew, with a tremendous and heroic effort of self-control, pulled himself a little together and essayed to speak.
"Do not prolong this scene, sir," he said, in a cracked, dry voice, which seemed to come from a vast distance. "Have your men in at once and take us away. It will be better so. You have won the game, and we must pay the penalty. I suppose you have captured the men who made the attempt upon your life, and"—here Levison remembered, with an added throb of horror, how another had suffered in place of his intended victim—"and who, unfortunately, killed another person in mistake for you. So be it. We are ready to go."
The sound of the Jew's voice speaking thus, and calm with all the hideous calmness of defeat and utter despair, had roused Lord Ballina's sinking consciousness. As Levison concluded, the young man fell upon his knees and almost crawled to the feet of the Master.
"It's all lies," he gasped—"it's all lies, sir! I don't know what he is talking about, with his murders and things. I know nothing whatever about it all. I wasn't in it. I assure you I'd nothing whatever to do with it. It was he who did it all."
The livid young wretch extended a shaking hand of cowardly accusation, and pointed it at his whilom friend.
Joseph looked down to the creature at his feet with a blazing scorn in his eyes, and as he did so the Jew, who was still leaning upon the opposite wall, as if too physically weak to move, broke in upon the end of Lord Ballina's quavering exculpation.
"It's quite true, sir," he said to Joseph, though even in the hour of his own agony the man's bitter contempt for the coward crept into his voice and chilled it. "It is perfectly true, this young—er—gentleman, Lord Ballina, knew nothing of the matters of which you speak. Nor can he be connected with them in any way."
"Friend," said Joseph, very calmly, lifting his eyes from the thing that crouched upon the floor below him—"friend, of what matters have I spoken?"
Levison looked steadily at him. A puzzled expression crossed his terror-stricken face for a moment, and then left it as before.
"Why quibble about words," he said, "at such a time as this? I beg you, sir, to call in your detectives, and have me taken away at once. I, and I only, am responsible for the attempt upon your life."