It was given without hesitation and, so far as I could see, without bluff. I have been connected with large commercial enterprises long enough to be a tolerable judge.
"I'll let O'Rane know at once," I said, getting up again and motioning Beresford to do the same. "It will be an unsavoury case, Grayle."
"Which is presumably the reason he's so unwilling to go on with it," Grayle sneered. "But make no mistake who comes out of it worst. He hasn't bothered to think. Your—proposal I reject with thanks, but I'll make another. You're quite right in thinking that I would sooner not be mixed up in these proceedings any more; if O'Rane will give me a written undertaking to drop them here—and—now and never to revive them, we can let it rest at that."
Beresford had not promised to refrain from laughter, and I excused it as the only possible comment on the offer.
"Come along," I said to him. "We're wasting the nation's time; and the nation won't have the benefit of it much longer."
Grayle shrugged his shoulders and led the way to the door on the lane.
"So be it!" he said. "Yet mine was a fairer bargain than yours. There was at least a quid pro quo."
"I'm afraid I don't see it."
"Then I'm afraid your principals haven't instructed you very thoroughly," he answered impatiently. "From your general tone to me, you evidently think that I've behaved very badly, that it was my fault, that the sympathy of the court will be entirely with O'Rane and his wife. It may be with O'Rane," he added meaningly. "I'll tell you at once that I propose to defend the action and, though it's only guess-work, I shall be very much surprised if O'Rane gets a decree.... If he likes washing his wife's dirty linen in public, that's his affair, but what seems to have been overlooked is the attitude of Mrs. O'Rane throughout. To begin with, I can call witnesses to prove that O'Rane repeatedly proclaimed that he wouldn't raise a finger to keep his wife, if she preferred to risk her happiness with another man. She used to say she wouldn't stay with him, if she was unhappy; I can produce witnesses who'll testify to that, too. Any pretence, therefore, that I burst in on a happily married couple and forced them apart is historically untrue. And this will come out in court. But what matters more from the point of view of Mrs. O'Rane's reputation is the evidence—I think you were with me, Stornaway, when she rang me up one night at the House. What you've overlooked in your haste to condemn me, what O'Rane's overlooked in his haste to save his wife's reputation is the part played by his wife. I'll accept full responsibility for my share of whatever's happened, but I'm afraid you'll find it won't ease your position. Mrs. O'Rane's letters to me, which will, of course, be read in court, prove that it was she and she alone——"
It was not difficult to imagine the end of the sentence. Grayle spoke with the bored indifference of a man who has had unwelcome attentions thrust upon him, who has tolerated them as long as he can, but who at last and at the risk of wounding an importunate mistress.... I never heard it, though, because Beresford, unpardonably if excusably forgetting his promise of silence and immobility, had twitched my umbrella from my grasp and whirled it backhanded into Grayle's face with a cry of,