“Perhaps not,” Herriard returned; “but we did not want to win like that.”
“Better like that than not at all,” Gastineau rejoined. “You now have the Countess practically cleared so far as the world is concerned. The passing of Campion rehabilitates her by providing a very plausible, if, to legal minds, somewhat unconvincing, solution of the mystery.”
The pointed significance in his tone was not to be ignored. Herriard started up, impelled by the shock of a conviction then first realized. “Gastineau,” he exclaimed, in a tone of protest, almost of indignation, “you are not going to tell me you think the Countess guilty?”
The other smiled meaningly. “My dear Geof, I am not blind to possibilities and probabilities, if you are; but then, perhaps, I have not the same reason.”
It was the first time that Herriard had known his friend to sneer at him, and the tone of the last words stung him uncomfortably. In that instant he realized how the fissure between them was extending; and the situation which seemed so swiftly developing was made none the less unhappy by its incomprehensibility, by its being devoid of an adequate cause. A difference of opinion. Was that to dissolve the close partnership, that alliance of theirs against the world? It seemed pitifully absurd. Herriard had vowed that no act of his should help to widen the breach. It was curious how this case had come between them; there seemed such animus behind Gastineau’s arguments, and as Herriard’s feeling was all the other way, it became increasingly difficult for him to keep to his resolve. “My dear fellow, it is preposterous,” was all he could trust himself to say. “I can hardly think you mean it seriously.”
“I merely say that I see nothing inherently improbable in the suggestion,” Gastineau replied, in his keen argumentative manner. “In fact, from the circumstantial evidence we have, the probabilities are, pace the late Mr. Campion, all the other way. I will simply put one point to you. Why and how should another man, the person whom Campion declared he saw, stab Martindale to death with an ornament from Countess Alexia’s hair? Why should he want to do it at all? and, if so, why and how with that particular weapon? At least it points to the Countess being an accessory before the fact. Now I really should like to hear a good rebutting argument against that.”
Herriard had turned away from him, and was leaning with his arms on the mantelpiece. “The argument is,” he replied, in a voice low from restraint, “that the Countess lost the ornament. And my unshakable belief is that she had nothing to do with Martindale’s death either as principal or accessory.”
“Your argument is nebulously vague and just conceivable, but at the same time wildly improbable,” Gastineau returned, in his quiet, cutting tone. “But that you seem not a little épris with your fair client I should not think you in earnest in putting it forward.”
Herriard raised his head and turned to the couch. “Gastineau, if you really think the Countess guilty, for Heaven’s sake, let the case never be mentioned between us again. We don’t want to quarrel; it would ill become me to be at issue with you to whom I owe so much, but it is certain that if we pursue this subject we shall quarrel, since my whole sense revolts from your theory. So let it be taboo.”
Gastineau laughed, and his laugh was as a sneer at the other’s heated earnestness.