“Yes, there were the letters. But—did it ever occur to you to notice that not one word was said in those letters, or one new fact given, that we had not heard before? They bore out St. George’s statement, but they afforded no proof that his statement was true.”
“That is, Mr. Johnny, you would insinuate, putting it genteelly, that St. George fabricated the answers himself.”
“No, not that he did, only that there was nothing in the letters to render it impossible that he did.”
“After having fabricated the pretty little tale that it was a stranger he picked up, and what the stranger said to him, and all the rest of it, eh, Johnny?”
“Well”—I hesitated—“as to the letters, it seemed to me to be an unaccountable thing that the traveller could not let even one person see him in private, to hear his personal testimony: say Mr. Delorane, or a member of the Brook family. The Squire went hot over it: he asked St. George whether the fellow thought men of honour carried handcuffs in their pockets. Again, the stranger said he should be at liberty to come forward later, but he never has come.”
Darbyshire smoked on. “I’d give this full of gold,” he broke the silence with, touching the big bowl of the clay pipe, “to know where Brook vanished to.”
My restless fingers had strayed to his old leaden tobacco jar, on the table by me, pressing down its heavy lid and lifting it again. When I next spoke he might have thought the words came out of the tobacco, they were so low.
“Do you think St. George had a grudge against Brook, Mr. Darbyshire?—that he wished him out of the way?”
Darbyshire gave me a look through the wreathing smoke.