Spargo went round to the Temple and up to Ronald Breton’s chambers. He found the young barrister just preparing to leave, and looking unusually grave and thoughtful. At sight of Spargo he turned back from his outer door, beckoned the journalist to follow him, and led him into an inner room.
“I say, Spargo!” he said, as he motioned his visitor to take a chair. “This is becoming something more than serious. You know what you told me to do yesterday as regards Aylmore?”
“To get him to tell all?—Yes,” said Spargo.
Breton shook his head.
“Stratton—his solicitor, you know—and I saw him this morning before the police-court proceedings,” he continued. “I told him of my talk with you; I even went as far as to tell him that his daughters had been to the Watchman office. Stratton and I both begged him to take your advice and tell all, everything, no matter at what cost to his private feelings. We pointed out to him the serious nature of the evidence against him; how he had damaged himself by not telling the whole truth at once; how he had certainly done a great deal to excite suspicion against himself; how, as the evidence stands at present, any jury could scarcely do less than convict him. And it was all no good, Spargo!”
“He won’t say anything?”
“He’ll say no more. He was adamant. ‘I told the entire truth in respect to my dealings with Marbury on the night he met his death at the inquest,’ he said, over and over again, ‘and I shall say nothing further on any consideration. If the law likes to hang an innocent man on such evidence as that, let it!’ And he persisted in that until we left him. Spargo, I don’t know what’s to be done.”
“And nothing happened at the police-court?”
“Nothing—another remand. Stratton and I saw Aylmore again before he was removed. He left us with a sort of sardonic remark—‘If you all want to prove me innocent,’ he said, ‘find the guilty man.’”
“Well, there was a tremendous lot of common sense in that,” said Spargo.