“Hanged if I know what you’ve come for!” he said. “What’s the good of it? You may mean well, but——”
“Oh, Barthorpe, how can you!” exclaimed Peggie. “Of course we’ve come! Do you think it possible we shouldn’t come? You know very well we all believe you innocent.”
“Who’s all?” demanded Barthorpe, half-sneeringly. “Yourself, perhaps, and the parlour-maid!”
“All of us,” said Selwood, thinking it was time a man spoke. “Cox-Raythwaite, Mr. Tertius, myself. That’s a fact, anyhow, so you’d better grasp it.”
Barthorpe straightened himself and looked keenly at Selwood. Then he spoke naturally and simply.
“I’m much obliged to you, Selwood,” he said. “I’d shake hands with you if I could. I’m obliged to the others, too—especially to old Tertius—I’ve wronged him, no doubt. But”—here his face grew dark and savage—“if you only knew how I was tricked by that devil! Is he caught?—that’s what I want to know.”
“No!” answered Selwood. “But never mind him—we’ve come here to see what we can do for you. That’s the important thing.”
“What can anybody do?” said Barthorpe, with a mirthless laugh. “You know all the evidence. It’s enough—they’ll hang me on it!”
“Barthorpe, you mustn’t!” expostulated Peggie. “That’s not the way to treat things. Tell him,” she went on, turning to Selwood, “tell him all that Professor Cox-Raythwaite said the other night.”
Selwood repeated the gist of the Professor’s arguments and suggestions, and Barthorpe began to show some interest. But at the end he shook his head.