The Duke of Lancashire also was having a very uncomfortable time of it. The suppression of the result of Dr. Blaydon’s post-mortem examination was an awkward point for him to meet. He was closely questioned on the incident, and it is to be feared that the ducal conscience went to bed that night with the weight of a certain ugly sin called perjury upon it. For though his Grace was fain to admit that he had given the obsequious medico a substantial cheque to write a certificate of natural death so that the fuss of an inquest might be avoided, he yet stoutly denied all knowledge of the wound, the pin-prick which had just reached that false heart, and stopped its mechanism. Denial here was safe, since the only other person who had absolute knowledge of the transaction, namely the doctor himself, had been summoned to another Bar where perjury is futile. Still, although he stuck to his repudiation of the suggestion--since its admission would have had serious consequences, even for a Duke--his dignity was badly battered about during that searching hour. He rather attempted to take the line that he was too big a personage to be expected to trouble himself about such unpleasant trifles as the mysterious death of a guest under his roof: he was accustomed to leave all these dismal, disagreeable details to his people who would naturally understand better than he how to deal with them. This is the line for an aristocratic witness to take when he is to be the joy of the opposing counsel and the despair of his own. The work of cutting away the fringe of pomp and artificial grandeur, and holding up the poor man inside them as a wretched specimen of weak-minded humanity, is easy and paying. The harried Duke, stripped for the hour, of his fine feathers, made to stand out in a dingy, uncompromising court, and show what manner of man he really was, cut a sorry figure. Counsel poked fun at his pomposity, his affectation of high and mighty indifference; there was much laughter in court, and the whole deplorable business was given verbatim (parentheses and all) in the papers. The case, when it at last reached the committal stage, was left hanging in an evenly balanced position, and public opinion was divided, although not quite so evenly, as to the merits of the issue. CHAPTER X A SENSATIONAL APPEARANCE One night, during the interval which fell between the magisterial proceedings and the trial proper, when the judgment of the law was yet suspended, while that of public opinion was clamorously divided, Herriard came hurrying to the house in Mayfair with a startling piece of news. It was no less than the unexpected acquisition of evidence which seemed as though it must at a stroke establish Countess Alexia’s innocence of the death of Captain Martindale.