"Innocent or guilty, the girl has suffered terribly. She has been several days in hospital at Ramsey, but she was to be removed to Castle Rushen this morning. Her case is to come on next week at the Court of General Gaol Delivery, so perhaps you will send me a telegram immediately saying if you can take up the defence.
"As you see the poor creature is herself an illegitimate child—the name by which she is commonly known being Bessie Collister."
Alick shrieked. He had seen the blow coming, but when it came it fell on him like a thunderbolt.
It was all a lie—a damned lie! Nobody would make him believe it. Bessie arrested for the murder of her child! She had never had a child.
He leapt to his feet and tramped the room on stiffened limbs and with a heart throbbing with anger. Then, half afraid, but doing his best to compose himself, he took the report and the Depositions out of the big envelope, and, sitting before the dead hearth with his shaking feet on the fender, and holding the folio pages in his dead-cold hands, he read the evidence.
As he did so he shrieked again, but this time with laughter. What a tissue of manifest lies! The Skillicornes and their quarrel with Dan Baldromma—what a malicious conspiracy! Lord, what blind fools the police could be! And the Attorney, had he come to his second childhood?
Again and again Alick thumped the desk with his fist and filled the air of the room with the dust that rose in the sunshine which was now pouring through the windows.
There was a photograph of Bessie on the mantelpiece—a copy of the same that she had sent to Stowell. He snatched it up and kissed it. Never had Bessie been so dear to him as now—now when she was in prison under a false accusation. And the best of it was that he was to get her off. He must see her at once, though.
"My poor girl! In Castle Rushen!"
The first thing to do was to wash and change (he cut himself badly in shaving), but in less than half-an-hour he was at the Post-office telegraphing to Fenella.