"Mr Arnecliffe, I have not yet touched on the point which tells most against the course of action you are proposing to pursue. You say you are going to tell the first policeman you are so fortunate as to encounter that you're the man who murdered George Emmett. Let me tell you, sir, that in making that statement you will be incurring a very grave responsibility; since it is by no means certain that you did murder George Emmett."
"That's what I said! That's what I told him! That's what I was trying to explain to him when you came in!"
"Am I to understand that you hesitated to give Miss Gilbert's statement the weight it deserved?"
Arnecliffe laughed.
"You surely don't propose to associate yourself with Miss Gilbert in splitting hairs!"
"Splitting hairs, sir? No! That is a process in which I propose to associate myself with no one. If you will have the goodness to permit me to finish what I have to say it will shortly become quite clear that nothing is farther from my mind than any species of equivocation. You will probably have heard that that genius of a local doctor was prepared to certify that the man was dead when he wasn't."
"Of course he heard; I told him--I suppose that's what he calls my hair-splitting."
"Then, Miss Gilbert, in that case he is a singular person; unless we can put it down to mere ignorance of the meaning of his own language--because, sir, the man was not dead. On the contrary, he was so much alive that he contrived, shortly afterwards, to throw himself off a table on to the floor. There, face downwards, on the floor they found him; whereupon, it seems, a second local genius decided that he had been killed by the fall--in spite of which pronouncement, let me assure you, quite between ourselves, that it is by no means sure that he is dead even yet."
"Mr Frazer! I mean----"
What the girl did mean she did not herself seem to be certain. Arnecliffe eyed the speaker as if he were searching for outward and visible signs that he was indulging in some recondite jest; then asked: