"You were very nearly--however, I don't care. I was about to say that the point is that you can see for yourself that, since it was the fall from the table which was the cause of Mr Emmett's death, it's quite plain that, as I said, you didn't kill him."
"Miss Gilbert, you would make an excellent lawyer."
"You are laughing at me again. Pray why now?"
"I assure you that I am not doing so in any opprobrious sense. Only, while I quite see your point, it seems to me that it's one rather for lawyers than for a plain man."
"Why? It is a plain statement of a plain fact!"
"Still, the fact remains--doesn't it?--that if it had not been for the blow I struck him he would not have died?"
"It doesn't follow; if they hadn't put him on the table he might have been alive now."
"Who might have been alive now? Excuse me if I startle you; but you were so interested in each other's conversation that, in the din of this orchestral display with which the elements are favouring us, my modest knocking went unnoticed. I knocked even twice; then, as I was a little damp, I thought it possible that you might forgive me if I came in out of the wet."
The speaker was the soi-disant Eric Frazer, whose tapping, in the heat of their discussion, had gone unnoticed. Not alone was he, as he put it, a little damp; he was obviously soaking wet. His clothes stuck to him as if they were glued to his skin; looking the more remarkable because, originally, they had been very nice clothes indeed--the cherished productions of a fashionable tailor. His hair and moustache were plastered to his head and face. Water trickled from him in rivulets on to the pretty carpet which covered the cabin floor. At sight of the spectacle which he presented Dorothy gave a cry of dismay.
"Oh, what has happened?"