"That's a part of the story with which I'm not very well posted. It wasn't only imagination when, while Dodwell was clubbing me, I felt that Beaton had come into the room; he had, and Dodwell had seen him--and he saw what Dodwell was doing to me. He will be able to bear witness to that part of my story, as Dodwell is probably aware."
Suddenly, it seemed, that Mr. Dodwell had decided to take up a new position as regarded the last part of Noel Draycott's story.
"I don't deny that I did strike him, I never have denied it, but what I did was only done in self-defence."
"While a man was lying on the floor you struck him, with a club, in self-defence?"
"He had been threatening me, and telling all sorts of lies, and I was half beside myself with rage, and I meant to give him the thrashing he deserved, and if I went a little too far it was because I had been drinking, as he had, and was mad with fury, and didn't know what I was doing--and there you are."
"And all this time the world has been wondering what became of Draycott, and you never so much as hinted that you knew."
"I didn't know; I was just as much in the dark as anyone--I wondered."
"You thought you had killed him?"
Dodwell was silent; Clifford went on. "You thought you had killed him, and that was why you never said a word."
"I knew I hadn't killed him."