He handed her the letter his one-time fellow-student had written, and she read it through—once quickly, and then once very slowly.
At last she let the piece of paper flutter down on to the hearth-rug.
He scarcely dared look at her, yet at last, when she did speak, there was in her tone a ring of confidence, almost of happy confidence, that somehow irritated him.
“The first thing we’ve go to do,” she exclaimed, “is to get Mr. Kentworthy to come and see us. I don’t know what happens when an innocent man is accused of murder. Who looks after his interests? Would it be Mr. Toogood, the solicitor to the Etna China Company?”
“I suppose Mr. Toogood will be the solicitor in charge of the case,” he answered gravely. “I intend to get a London man.”
She gazed at him surprised. “How d’you mean? Why should you have a solicitor, Uncle Jock?”
He got up. “Because,” he said, looking down into her flushed face, “I gave a wrong death certificate.”
He could not help adding, with a touch of intense bitterness, “I am the simple country doctor who was taken in, and who unwittingly abetted the murderer in his foul deed.”
Then he sat down, heavily, in his armchair by the fire.
She threw herself on her knees on the ground before him. “You don’t mean, you can’t mean, that you think Harry——?”