I was almost happy; the cloven hoof had peeped so damningly out. The little man bowed briskly to the old judge, asked for a chair, sat himself down, and arranged his coat-tails.
“As I was saying,” he prattled on, “the trouble and the worry that this man caused to His Grace, myself, and Admiral Rowley were inconceivable. You have no idea, you... ah... can’t conceive. And no wonder, for, as it turned out, the island was simply honeycombed by his spies and agents. You have no idea; people who seemed most respectable, people we ourselves had dealings with...”
He rattled on at immense length, the barrister taking huge pinches of yellow snuff, and smiling genially with the air of a horse-trainer watching a pony go faultlessly through difficult tricks. Every now and then he flicked his whip.
“Mr. Oldham, you saw the prisoner three times. If it does not overtax your memory pray tell us.” And the little creature pranced off in a new direction.
“Tax my memory! Gad, I like that. You remember a man who has had your blood as near as could be, don’t you?”
I had been looking at him eagerly, but my interest faded away now. It was going to be the old confusing of my identity with Nikola’s. And yet I seemed to know the little beggar’s falsetto; it was a voice one does not forget.
“Remember!” he squeaked. “Gad, gentlemen of the jury, he came as near as possible———You have no idea what a ferocious devil it is.”
I was wondering why on earth Nichols should have wanted to kill such a little thing. Because it was obvious that it must have been Nichols.
“As near as possible murdered myself and Admiral Rowley and a Mr. Topnambo, a most enlightened and loyal... ah... inhabitant of the island, on the steps of a public inn.”
I had it then. It was the little man David Mac-donald had rolled down the steps with, that night at the Ferry Inn on the Spanish Town road.