Tallington listened with absorbed attention, his face growing graver and graver as Brereton marshalled the facts and laid stress on one point of evidence after another. He was a good listener--a steady, watchful listener--Brereton saw that he was not only taking in every fact and noting every point, but was also weighing up the mass of testimony. And when the story came to its end he spoke with decision, spoke, too, just as Brereton expected he would, making no comment, offering no opinion, but going straight to the really critical thing. "There are only two things to be done," said Tallington. "They're the only things that can be done. We must send for Bent, and tell him. Then we must get Cotherstone here, and tell him. No other course--none!" "Bent first?" asked Brereton. "Certainly! Bent first, by all means. It's due to him. Besides," said Tallington, with a grim smile, "it would be decidedly unpleasant for Cotherstone to compel him to tell Bent, or for us to tell Bent in Cotherstone's presence. And--we'd better get to work at once, Brereton! Otherwise--this will get out in another way." "You mean--through the police?" said Brereton. "Surely!" replied Tallington. "This can't be kept in a corner. For anything we know somebody may be at work, raking it all up, just now. Do you suppose that unfortunate lad Stoner kept his knowledge to himself? I don't! No--at once! Come, Bent's office is only a minute away--I'll send one of my clerks for him. Painful, very--but necessary." The first thing that Bent's eyes encountered when he entered Tallington's private room ten minutes later was the black-bound, brass-clasped scrap-book, which Brereton had carried down with him and had set on the solicitor's desk. He started at the sight of it, and turned quickly from one man to the other. "What's that doing here?" he asked, "is--have you made some discovery? Why am I wanted?" Once more Brereton had to go through the story. But his new listener did not receive it in the calm and phlegmatic fashion in which it had been received by the practised ear of the man of law. Bent was at first utterly incredulous; then indignant: he interrupted; he asked questions which he evidently believed to be difficult to answer; he was fighting--and both his companions, sympathizing keenly with him, knew why. But they never relaxed their attitude, and in the end Bent looked from one to the other with a cast-down countenance in which doubt was beginning to change into certainty. "You're convinced of--all this?" he demanded suddenly. "Both of you? It's your conviction?" "It's mine," answered Tallington quietly. "I'd give a good deal for your sake, Bent, if it were not mine," said Brereton. "But--it is mine. I'm--sure!" Bent jumped from his chair. "Which of them is it, then?" he exclaimed. "Gad!--you don't mean to say that Cotherstone is--a murderer! Good heavens!--think of what that would mean to--to----" Tallington got up and laid a hand on Bent's arm.