I almost fainted when I heard the accusation, and I am sure that I must have looked as guilty as if I had committed the theft.
A triumphant smile flitted across Iffley’s features, and he passed the knotted tails of his cat, as if mechanically, through his fingers, while he cast a glance at me which I too well understood. The captain turned towards me.
“What is this I hear?” he asked. “Do you acknowledge the theft, Weatherhelm?”
“No, sir; certainly not,” I answered, with as firm a voice as I could command, though I felt conscious that it was faltering as I spoke.
“What proof have you that Weatherhelm committed the theft?” asked the captain of the culprit.
“Because two men, if not more, watched him, and knew that it was him,” was the answer; and now the man spoke in a firmer voice than I had done, and I fancied looked more innocent.
“Produce your witnesses,” said the captain.
The man hesitated for a minute, and his eye ranged with an uneasy glance along the lines of men drawn up on deck, as if anxiously scanning their countenances, for he must have felt that they knew him, and that he was not generally believed. At last his eyes rested on two who were standing together.
“Bill Sykes and Dick Todd saw him, sir; they know all about it. They’ll tell you; they’ll prove I am innocent.”
The theft had been committed on the purser’s stores. Some tobacco and sugar and some other things had been stolen. Now Saull Ley, the accused, had been seen coming out of the store-room on one occasion when the purser’s clerk had left the keys in the door for a short time and gone away. The purser, on his return, had missed some tobacco and sugar, and that same evening a small quantity of both those articles had been found in Ley’s possession.