"Yes; to me: it will be disclosed at the trial."
"He was after no good, I know," nodded the sergeant oracularly.
Mr. Winthorne raised his eyebrows, and slightly jerked his shoulders. The movement may have meant anything or nothing. He did not reply in words.
Sergeant Delves fell into a reverie. He roused himself from it to take a searching gaze at the lawyer. "Sir," said he, and he could hardly have spoken more earnestly had his life depended on it, "tell me the truth out-and-out. Do you, yourself, from the depths of your own judgment, believe Herbert Dare to have been innocent?"
"Delves, as truly as that you and I now stand here, I honestly believe that he had no more to do with his brother's death than we had."
"Then I'm blest if I don't take up the other scent!" exclaimed Mr. Delves, slapping his thigh. "I did think of it once, but I dropped it again, so sure was I that it was Master Herbert."
"What scent is that?"
"Look here," said the sergeant—"but now it's my turn to warn you to be dark. There was a young woman met Anthony Dare the night of the murder, when he was going down to the Star and Garter. It's a young woman he did not behave genteel to some time back, as the ghost says in the song. She met him that night, and she gave him a bit of her tongue; not much, for he wouldn't stop to listen. But now, Mr. Winthorne, it has crossed my mind many times whether she might not have watched for his going home again, and followed him; followed him right into the dining-room, and done the mischief. I'll lay a guinea it was her!" added the sergeant, arriving at a hasty conclusion. "I shall look up again now."
"Do you mean that young woman in Honey Fair?" asked Mr. Winthorne.
"Just so. Her, and nobody else. The doubt has crossed me; but, as I say, I was so certain it was the brother, that I did not follow it up."