About ninety seconds later the closet-door was heard to shut.
‘There,’ observed Michael, ‘that’s more homelike. You can turn now, my pallid Pitman. Is this the grog?’ he ran on. ‘Heaven forgive you, it’s a lemonade.’
‘But, O, Finsbury, what are we to do with it?’ walled the artist, laying a clutching hand upon the lawyer’s arm.
‘Do with it?’ repeated Michael. ‘Bury it in one of your flowerbeds, and erect one of your own statues for a monument. I tell you we should look devilish romantic shovelling out the sod by the moon’s pale ray. Here, put some gin in this.’
‘I beg of you, Mr Finsbury, do not trifle with my misery,’ cried Pitman. ‘You see before you a man who has been all his life—I do not hesitate to say it—imminently respectable. Even in this solemn hour I can lay my hand upon my heart without a blush. Except on the really trifling point of the smuggling of the Hercules (and even of that I now humbly repent), my life has been entirely fit for publication. I never feared the light,’ cried the little man; ‘and now—now—!’
‘Cheer up, old boy,’ said Michael. ‘I assure you we should count this little contretemps a trifle at the office; it’s the sort of thing that may occur to any one; and if you’re perfectly sure you had no hand in it—’
‘What language am I to find—’ began Pitman.
‘O, I’ll do that part of it,’ interrupted Michael, ‘you have no experience.’ But the point is this: If—or rather since—you know nothing of the crime, since the—the party in the closet—is neither your father, nor your brother, nor your creditor, nor your mother-in-law, nor what they call an injured husband—’
‘O, my dear sir!’ interjected Pitman, horrified.
‘Since, in short,’ continued the lawyer, ‘you had no possible interest in the crime, we have a perfectly free field before us and a safe game to play. Indeed, the problem is really entertaining; it is one I have long contemplated in the light of an A. B. case; here it is at last under my hand in specie; and I mean to pull you through. Do you hear that?—I mean to pull you through. Let me see: it’s a long time since I have had what I call a genuine holiday; I’ll send an excuse tomorrow to the office. We had best be lively,’ he added significantly; ‘for we must not spoil the market for the other man.’