“No, no,” he said quickly and with decision. “The Countess knew nothing of the affair.”
Mr. Quickjohn felt called upon to justify his former attitude.
“There was a good colourable primâ facie case,” he maintained, with a manner which claimed that his long and eventful experience entitled to respect any theory to which he thought proper to commit himself. “You must recollect, Mr. Herriard, the lady in question was the last person known to have been with the deceased before his death was discovered; then there was the finding of the little dagger with which the crime must have been committed, and the evidence of the maid, Gibson, that the Countess had worn it as an ornament in her hair that evening. Then——”
It was more than Herriard could stand. “Yes, yes, Mr. Quickjohn,” he interrupted impatiently, “we know all about that. I admit there was ground for a primâ facie suspicion. But I and, presumably, you, know now that the Countess was not cognizable of Captain Martindale’s death. However, you have not come to tell me that? You have found the man——”
Mr. Quickjohn raised his thick hand in protest. He liked to give his evidence in his own way, and judged leading questions unnecessary and a mistake. He was perhaps rather surprised that a counsel of Herriard’s standing should not know better than to try and hurry him. “I have,” he replied, with marked deliberation and a suggestion of touched dignity, “I have, after careful sifting of the materials at my disposal, made a discovery and, I think, arrived at a satisfactory settlement of the question as to the identity of the person at whose hands the Captain met his death.”
Herriard, seeing his mistake, now merely nodded him on.
“You see, sir,” Quickjohn proceeded, in his more business-like, witness-box manner, “the difficulty has been in searching for a person answering the description among the whole list of the Duchess of Lancashire’s guests. There were four hundred and forty-two noblemen and gentlemen invited to Vaux House that night, and no record available of those who attended, those who were absent, or those who may have been there uninvited.”
“Yes,” Herriard commented, “you had a difficult task.”
“Yes, and no mistake,” Quickjohn agreed, “and I am prepared to admit that if it had not been through a mere chance, I should never have been able to put my finger on the right individual.”
“Ah!”