There was a savage sarcasm in his voice, which he did not trouble to conceal.
“And now, look here,” he went on with a sudden change of manner. He straightened himself and looked squarely at Edward Mottisfont. “Those letters have got to be kept.”
“Now I should have thought—” began Edward, but David broke in almost violently.
“For Heaven’s sake, don’t start thinking, Edward.” He said: “Just you listen to me. These letters have got to be kept. They’ve got to sit in a safe at a lawyer’s. We’ll seal ’em up in the presence of witnesses, and send ’em off. We’re not out of the wood yet. If this business were ever to leak out—and, after all, there are four of us in it, and two of them are women—if it were ever to leak out, we should want these letters to save our necks. Yes—our necks. Good Lord, Edward, did you never realise your position? Did you never realise that any jury in the world would have hanged you on the evidence? It was damning—absolutely damning. And I come in as accessory after the fact. No, thank you, I think we’ll keep the letters, until we’re past hanging. And there’s another thing—how many people have you told? Mary, of course?”
“Yes, Mary, but no one else,” said Edward.
David made an impatient movement.
“If you’ve told her, you’ve told her,” he said. “Now what you’ve got to do is this: you’ve got to rub it into Mary that it’s just as important for her to hold her tongue now as it was before the letter came. She was safe as long as she thought your neck was in danger, but do, for Heaven’s sake, get it into her head that I’m dead damned broke, if it ever gets out that I helped to hush up a case that looked like murder and turned out to be suicide. The law wouldn’t hang me, but I should probably hang myself. I’d be broke. Rub that in.”
“She may have told Elizabeth,” said Edward hesitatingly. “I’m afraid she may have told Elizabeth by now.”
“Elizabeth doesn’t talk,” said David shortly.
“Nor does Mary.” Edward’s tone was rather aggrieved.