Peter stammered over it. "I—I—knew they weren't much."
Lord Evelyn turned to Cheriton whose face was still bent down as if he didn't much like the scene now he had brought it about.
"You were right, as usual, Jim. And Denis was wrong. Denis, you know," he added to Peter, "was inclined to put your morals above your intelligence. He said you couldn't have known. Cheriton told him he was sure you had. It seems Cheriton was right."
It seemed that he was. Peter imagined that Cheriton would always be right.
After a moment's silence Peter gathered that they were all waiting to hear if he had anything to say about it. He hadn't much, but he might as well say it, such as it was.
"It won't make much difference, of course," he began, and his voice sounded odd and small and tired in the great room, "but I think I should like you to know that all this stopped three weeks ago. Hilary—we—decided then to—to give it up, and run 'The Gem' on different lines in future. We couldn't easily undo the past—but—but there's been nothing of the sort since then, and we didn't mean there to be again. Oh, I know that doesn't make much difference, of course...."
The only difference that mattered was that Denis frowned. Incidentally—only that didn't matter—Cheriton laughed curtly, and Lord Evelyn wearily said, "Oh, stop lying, stop lying. I'm so unutterably tired of your lies.... You think we don't know that your brother accepted a bribe this very afternoon.... Tell him, Jim."
So Jim told him. He told him shortly, and in plain words, and not as if he was pleased with his triumph in skilful detection, which he no doubt was.
"I rather wanted to sift this business, Margerison, as I had suspected for a good while more than I could prove. So to-day I sent a man to your brother, commissioning him to pretend to be an art-dealer and offer a sum of money for the insertion in 'The Gem' of an appreciative notice of some spurious objects. As perhaps you are aware, the offer was accepted.... It may seem to you an underhand way of getting evidence—but the case was peculiar."
He didn't look at Peter; his manner, though distant, was not now unfriendly; perhaps, having gained his object and sifted the business, there was room for compassion. It was a pity that Peter had made things worse by that last lie, though.