'I - ah - am aware of that,' replied Spencer, with traces of a bitter smile. He sat very straight in the chair, and his tubby figure had an odd dignity. He did not accept H.M.'s offer of a cigar, but sat with his hands flat on his knees. 'As a matter of strict record, I have been sitting in the public gallery all morning.'
'Uh-huh. I was pretty sure I saw you there,' observed H.M. casually. The other went a little more white. 'It's not a new trick. Charlie Peace did it at the trial of young Habron for the murder of the man Peace really killed. Honestly, you've got more guts than I thought you had.'
'But you didn't - speak up?'
"I hate rows in court” sniffed H.M., inspecting his fingers. 'It disturbs the nice soothin' atmosphere, and the feelin' of intellectual balance. Still, that's beside the point. I gather you got my message last night?'
Dr Hume put his hat on the floor, and leaned the umbrella carefully against the side of the chair.
'The point is that you have got me here,' he retorted, but without heat. 'Now will you answer one question? How did you know where to find me?'
'I didn't,' said H.M. 'But I had to try the most likely places. You'd done a bunk. But you had time to write a very long, very careful, and very weighty letter to your niece; and people who got to depend on the rush of aeroplanes or boat-trains don't usually have time for that. You knew they'd be after you, and that contempt of court is a criminal offence. There's only one excuse for it - extreme illness. I thought you'd probably run straight to your friend Tregannon, and gone to earth among the bedclothes and the ice-caps in his nursin' home. You can probably produce a certificate now, showin' how ruddy unwell you were yesterday. I've said a good many times that this tracing business is only a glorified version of the old chestnut about the idiot boy findin' the lost horse: "I just thought where I'd have gone if I had been a horse; and I went there; and he had." I sent you a message there, and you had.'
'Rather a queer kind of message,' said Spencer, looking hard at him.
'Yes. That's why it's time we got down to business. I thought there was one person at least you wouldn't want to see hanged.'
'You mean myself?'
'Right,' agreed H.M., taking his hand away from shading his eyes. He got out his watch, a large cheap one of the turnip variety, and put it on the table. 'Listen to me, doctor. I'm not bluffin'. I'll prove it, if you think I am. But in about fifteen minutes I'm due to be in court. I'll wind up the defence of Jim Answell this afternoon. I
don't say this as a certainty, mind - but, when I do, I think the betting's about a hundred to six that you'll be arrested for murder.'
The other remained quiet for a time, tapping his fingers on his knees. Then, reaching into an inside pocket, he took out a cigarette-case, extracted a cigarette, and closed the case with a rather vicious snap - as he might have closed a different sort of case. When he spoke, his voice was calm.
'That is bluff. I wondered, and now I know.'
'It's bluff that I know where the ink-pad and the golf-suit and all the rest of it really disappeared to; and that I've got 'em all in my possession right now?'
With the same impassive expression, H.M. reached into his own side-pocket. He drew out a black ink-pad in its ordinary tin-container, and a long rubber stamp inscribed with someone's name; and he flung them on the table among the plates. For the hundredth time I wondered at the connection, especially at the contrast between the violence of H.M.'s hand and the inscrutability of his face. Dr Hume did not seem so much taken aback as distressed and puzzled.
'But, my dear sir ... yes, of course; but what of it?' 'What of it?'
'Dr Quigley,' answered the other, with quiet bitterness, 'disposed of my character in court to-day. I suppose we shall have to accept his verdict. Granted that you produced every one of those interesting exhibits, what would it prove beyond what has already been proved? The man who has been already drowned views the prospect of a sea-voyage with equanimity.' A rather ghastly smile, an edge of the old bouncing and bustling smile, touched his face. I am not sure whether that is a quotation from Kai Lung. But, since I have already been virtually convicted of one thing, I don't give a damn for your French monkey-tricks.'
He lit the cigarette with a sharp jerk of the match across its box. H.M. remained staring at him for a short time, and H.M.'s face altered.
'Y'know -' H.M. began slowly. 'Burn me, I'm beginning to believe you really think Answell is guilty.'
'I am quite certain he is guilty.'
'Last night you wrote to Mary Hume swearin' you saw the murder done. Do you mind tellin' me if that was true?'
The other blew an edge of ash off his cigarette, holding it upright. 'I strongly object to giving an opinion even on the weather, as a rule. This much I'll tell you. The thing that has so - so fuddled and - yes, and maddened me throughout this whole affair,' he made a fierce gesture, 'is that I have done absolutely nothing! I tried to help Avory. I tried to help Mary. Granting that it was unethical, I believed it was for everyone's good ... and what happened? I am being hounded: yes, sir, I will repeat it: hounded. But even yesterday, when I was forced to go away, I tried to help Mary. I admitted to her that I supplied the brudine, at Avory's request. At the same time I was obliged to point out that James Answell is a murderer; and, if it were with my last breath, I should call him a murderer.'
Despite the man's innate love of clichés, his apparent sincerity was such that it overcame even the self-pity in his voice.
'You saw him do it?'
'I had to safeguard myself. If I wrote only the first part of the letter, you would take it into court, and it might help to save Answell - a murderer. So I had to ensure that you did not take it into court.'
'Oh,' said H.M. in a different tone. 'I see. You deliberately shoved that lie in so that we wouldn't dare use it as evidence?'
Dr Hume waved this aside, and became more calm.
'At considerable risk to myself, Sir Henry, I came here. That was in order to get as much information as I received. Fair play, eh? Surely that is fair? What I wish to know is my legal position in this matter. In the first place, I hold a certificate testifying to my illness yesterday -'
'From a doctor who's goin' to be struck off the register.'
'But who is not yet so discredited,' replied the other. 'If you insist on applying technicalities, I must use them as well. I was actually in attendance this morning, you know. In the second place, the Crown have waived their intention to call me as a witness; and their case is closed.'
'Sure. Still, the defence hasn't closed the case. And you can still be called as a witness: it won't matter for which side.'
Spencer Hume put down his cigarette carefully on the edge of the table. He folded his hands.
'Sir Henry, you will not call me as a witness. If you do, I will blow your whole case sky-high in just five seconds.'
'Oh-ho? So we're doin' a little arguing about compounding a felony, now, are we?' Hume's face tightened, and he looked round quickly at us; but H.M. had only a gleam of benevolent wickedness in his dull eye. 'Never mind,' H.M. went on. 'I'm pretty unorthodox, not to say twisty. Have you got the incredible, stratospheric cheek to threaten you'll go into the box and tell your story about seein' the murder done, if I dare to pull you out of retirement? Wow! Honest, son, I really admire you.'