“Could you expect otherwise? Here you have a title and a fortune and the owner refuses to come and take them. Why?”
“I wish,” he said a little wistfully, “that you and I were on the same side of the wall.”
“Meaning by that—”
“That you were with us instead of against us.”
I paused long and my reply to that was very carefully considered.
“Mr. Thoyne,” I said, “I am not on any side—I am not for or against anyone. I deal only in facts. If I convinced myself that young Clevedon murdered Sir Philip, I should say so. I have no reason for thinking that he did and certainly no desire to drag him into it. I am not fighting you nor anybody. You do not think young Clevedon murdered Sir Philip, or you try not to think so, but at the back of your mind is the fear that he did. You are therefore prejudiced but not, as you may think, in his favour. Your very horror of the possibility persuades you to treat it almost as a probability. But I, on the other hand, consider only evidence. I have no personal views in favour and certainly no prejudices against.”
“And what evidence have you?” he demanded.
“None,” I replied, “except what you and Miss Clevedon have provided and what his absence emphasises. If you and she had kept out of it and he had been at Cartordale, as he should have been, no suspicion ever would have attached to him. At this moment the only evidence against him is the belief you and Miss Clevedon harbour, that he—”
He paced from one side of the road to the other and then back again.
“I wish I dared tell you the whole story,” he said. “I believe you could help us.”