“No. I’ve got some sort of pride, even if I am a forger. Miss Hawkhurst had an income of her own. What had I? Nothing. Anyone might have supposed I was after her money.”
“Hardly the money alone, surely—Miss Hawkhurst herself would account for the attraction without that.”
“Well, I’m not that sort,” said Stenness, abruptly. “I’m not the kind of man who can live on his wife’s money. I can’t explain it. It is so.”
“Your conscience is a rum contrivance,” Sir Clinton commented, not unkindly.
“It’s in good working order, at any rate,” Stenness retorted. “Now, isn’t the thing clear enough to you? I meant to recover my money, clear out, work hard and make enough for my purposes. I reckoned that a couple of years would do it, if I took risks. And before I went, I was going to take the biggest risk of all. I was going to tell Sylvia the whole story and see what she had to say.”
Sir Clinton could not repress his surprise.
“You’re a rum card, Stenness. Be thankful I’ve had a large experience of liars and know when a man’s speaking the truth; for that yarn wouldn’t be believed by one person in a hundred.”
“It’s the truth for all that,” returned Stenness, doggedly. “I’ve told you before that I see nothing wrong in what I’ve done—nothing morally wrong, I mean. He swindled me. I take my money back again. What’s wrong in that?”
“I wish I had your simple way of looking at things.”
Sir Clinton sat in silence for a few moments, evidently pondering over the case.