“That,” said Garlett firmly, “is what I have come here to discover—I mean exactly how the matter stands.”
Dr. Wilson left the room, and when at last, after what seemed a long delay to the waiting man, he did come back, he was accompanied by a younger official. Garlett, perhaps by now morbidly sensitive, noticed that the new man only bowed; he did not shake hands with him, as Dr. Wilson had done.
“I understand that you wish to know exactly how the matter stands with regard to the action we took on the receipt of certain anonymous letters concerning the death of Mrs. Emily Garlett?”
“What I wish to know,” said Garlett coldly, “is not how the matter stands, but how I stand.”
As neither of the men opposite him answered his question, he went on deliberately: “Though I believe I was successful in convincing of my innocence the police inspector you sent down to make inquiries, he made it clear to me that nothing short of an exhumation would set the matter absolutely at rest.”
“In saying such a thing,” said Mr. Braithwaite sharply, “Kentworthy went very much beyond his instructions. But of course I admit that in a sense, speaking to you as man to man, he spoke the truth.”
Harry Garlett looked fixedly at the speaker, as if suddenly dowered with something like second-sight. He could almost see the interrogation mark in Mr. Braithwaite’s mind: “Is this man standing here before me an innocent man, or that vilest form of murderer—the secret poisoner?”
Speaking in a hard, composed tone of voice, he said firmly:
“I will be open with you, gentlemen. You probably know that I am going to be married. Putting myself out of the question, I feel that for the sake of my future wife I am compelled to ask the Home Secretary to issue an exhumation order. Surely I have the right, as an Englishman accused—however you may gloss over the fact—of the hideous crime of murder, to insist on the only thing that can absolutely clear me?”
At that moment Harry Garlett triumphed. The two civil servants looked at one another, each of them convinced that the man who had just spoken those strong, determined words was innocent.