“If I did not shoot him, and you did not, then who did?” Carradine repeated tensely. “If—” He could not go on.
Frank decided to help him. “It was the blue diamond that started it, was it not?”
Carradine started. “How in the world do you know of that?”
“My wife had the story of it from Mrs. Rampling herself. I fear,” he said carefully, looking directly at the young man, “that the lady is one of some — acquisitiveness. Sarah told me how you had procured the diamond for her—”
“How I did so in the hopes that it would buy her love, though I knew I could never marry her?” Carradine was suddenly in a passion. “How I beggared myself to procure it? No, I wager she would not have told Mrs. Whiteley that! I was — infatuated, there is no other word for it, I have had time to come to my senses and see that, at least. Infatuation that I thought was love. Through my brother’s good offices, I was able to obtain the diamond at a fair price, though its value was still staggering and it cost me all I possessed in the world, and though my expectations for the future are not nearly as high as many suppose.” Carradine came to a wretched halt and then said, “I see I must tell you everything... Between us, we may arrive at the truth.”
Frank, who already knew the truth, said nothing, looking at the brilliant stars pricking the darkening sky. Every sound was exaggerated in the expectant stillness, the shrill of the cicadas, the croo-crooing of sleepy doves, a shouted command from the defences.
Carradine sank onto the seat beside Frank. “She knew I had bought the diamond. I had had it set into a ring for her, but it took me some months to pluck up enough courage to put it on her finger, with all that such an extravagant gesture implied. Though there could have been no marriage between us, our friendship had not yet reached...” He faltered, a deep and painful flush mantling his pale cheek. “However, she had given me to understand that, on that very evening, she would accept the ring from me, and thereafter our relations would be somewhat different. She allowed me to put it on her finger before we dined. Rampling came home unexpectedly, just as we had finished our meal. He was drunk, but not so drunk that he did not immediately see how it was between us. He burst into a vile stream of abuse and Kitty became very — excited, I think, is the only word which will serve.” Carradine passed a hand across his brow. “How can I explain this? Her husband’s abuse did not appear to distress her — indeed, those big eyes of hers softened and sparkled, colour came to her cheeks when he actually raised his hand to her — it was almost as though — as though she was enjoying it! As if there was some strange complicity between them... Maybe, even, a kind of love. I think I began to see my folly, how I had been deceived, even then.”
The desperate young man buried his face in his hands. When he raised his head, his face was wet with tears. “Nevertheless, I squared up to Rampling. I could scarcely tell him to get out of his own house, but I warned him that he must not lay a finger on his wife. Whereupon, he laughed insolently and swaggered outside.” “Are you going to leave it at that, Edward?” she asked. “No, by God, I am not,” said I, and rushed out after him, intending to knock the fellow down. “But, stumbling in the darkness, I had not reached him before... before the shot rang out and he fell down dead. And that, I swear, is the truth of what happened.”
Into the silence erupted the loud crump of the first mortar shell, followed by another. A horse whickered in fright, and the night became hideous with noise and flames. Within the little garden, Edward Carradine sat as though turned to stone. “How could I have been such a fool? Seen with hindsight, it is so obvious — Rampling coming home, apparently unexpectedly, finding me in intimate circumstances with his wife, strutting out like that... Either she had arranged matters so, or she seized her chance. In any case, she had estimated my nature well. She knew I would go after him, prompted by her.” He said, his voice hard and dry as pebbles, “She would have shot me, like a dog—”
“Had you not stumbled. By the merest chance, or Divine intervention, just as the fatal shot was being fired. So that the wrong man received the bullet.”
“She would have shot me,” Carradine repeated bleakly. “In God’s name, why?”
“For love of money, Edward. For this.” From his pocket, Frank pulled forth a small soft leather pouch and from that withdrew the costly blue diamond ring, its radiance undimmed in the starlit darkness. “For greed, the life of one young man less important than the glitter of a diamond she could not resist...” He had no need to add that, having obtained the diamond, she had had no more use for Carradine. “An ugly thought, is it not?”
“Supposing I had indeed been the victim? Rampling would have been the first to be suspected.”
“I believe he had prudently bought himself an alibi.”
“And what of the revolver — what did she do with it?”
“There is a well, not six yards away.”
“But beyond where Rampling fell. She did not pass me, Frank.”
Frank saw again the moonlit street as he had come upon it — Carradine kneeling over the dead man, the revolver lying between the young man and the Ramplings’ door, heard again the running feet which heralded the arrival of others on the scene in moments. What else could he have done but conceal the weapon in his Gladstone bag? A pity he could not have swallowed it, he had thought afterwards, as the ostrich swallows large stones, bricks, or even chunks of metal to aid the process of digestion in its gizzard. It had lain on his conscience just as heavily ever since.
“She threw the gun towards me, purposely to incriminate me. And you picked it up, did you not? Frank, I owe you my life.”
Frank did not say that it was Sarah to whom Carradine owed his life, prompting him as if she had been beside him, telling him that this man could not be capable of murder. “I could not let an innocent man hang,” he said, and added words he had used once before, “It was to be done, and I did it.”
Yet he had paid for his action with the sleepless nights which had followed. For the first time in his life, he had trifled with the law, and the burden of it had been heavy.
Until he had remembered the story Sarah had told him, of the blue diamond.
He held the sparkling jewel out once more to Carradine, but Carradine shrank from it as though it had been a snake. “She may keep it, for all I care!”
“Don’t be a fool, Edward. It is yours by right.”
“How did you come by it?”
“She asked me to return it to you.”
Carradine laughed bitterly. “Once I might have believed that!”
“It is true. When I saw that gun lying there on the ground, I picked it up with scarcely a thought, but when I took it out of the bag, at home, I recognized it as one I myself had sold to Rampling twelve months ago. It was one of several I wished to dispose of, and he insisted on taking it on trial. If he was satisfied with its performance, he would pay me — which, I might add, he never did! When I recognized what was once mine, I took it to Mrs. Rampling and confronted her with it. Our conversation was — interesting. She subsequently asked me to return the diamond to you.”
“In exchange for your silence? Am I expected to believe that?”
Frank said gravely, “There was no need to ask for it.”
“I don’t understand! Why did you not take the gun to the police when you knew to whom it belonged? I would have been released immediately! Instead, a guilty woman has gone free! You call that justice?”