"And--if you are right?"
"Then I have to take him to the nearest prison, or, if he resists, to kill him."
"You will do that?"
"I will do anything necessary to prevent him ever escaping me again."
They talked on into the night, and Señor Guffanta extracted from the other a promise that he would lend him any assistance in his power, and that, above all, he would say nothing to Lord Penlyn that, by being retold to Smerdon, should, if he were actually the murderer, help him to still longer escape.
"I promise you," Stuart said, "and the more willingly because I myself would give him up to justice if I were sure he is the man. But that, of course, I cannot be; it is you alone who can identify this cruel murderer. But, in one thing I am sure you are wrong."
"In what thing?"
"In thinking that Lord Penlyn is in the slightest way an accomplice, or suspects Smerdon at all. If he did so suspect him, I believe that he would himself cause him to be arrested, even though they are such friends."
"What motive would Smerdon have to kill Walter except to remove him from the other's path? Do you think he would have done it without consulting Lord Penlyn?"
"I am certain that if he did do it, as you think----"