“You think that I had just cause for shooting him?” said Marsland.
“I think you had no right to take upon yourself the responsibility of saying ‘The law will fail to punish these men and therefore I will punish them without invoking the aid of the law!’”
“I do not regret what I have done. As I said before, if I had to go through it again I would not hesitate to shoot him. Perhaps it is because I have lived so much with death while I was at the front that human life does not seem to me a sacred thing. These two men deserved death if ever men did.”
“You believe that no jury would convict you?” said Crewe.
“I do not see how a jury of patriotic Englishmen could do so. But I do not care about that. I have finished with my life; I do not care what becomes of me. When I recall what I have been through over there in France, when I think of the thousands of brave men who have died agonized deaths, when I see again the shattered mutilated bodies of my men in the shell-hole with me—I want to forget that I have ever lived. All that remains to be done is that you should hand me over to the police.”
“That is a responsibility which I should like to be spared,” said Crewe gravely. “I think we may leave it to Brett.”
“To Brett!” exclaimed Marsland, springing to his feet again in renewed excitement. “Do you think he has escaped death; do you think he has got away?”
“I feel sure he was killed. But if his body is recovered the police will learn from it that it was you who shot Lumsden.”
“How will they find that out?”
“The girl Maynard has told them that he had an important paper in his possession when he was drowned and that is why they are so anxious to recover the body. They do not know the contents of the document but it is an easy matter to divine them. Let us look at this matter in the way in which Brett must have looked at it after thinking it over carefully. He knew that you had shot Lumsden; he knew that if he met you his life would not be worth a moment’s purchase. The shot you fired at him when he was breaking into your room at Staveley was an emphatic warning on that point, if he needed any warning.