Drelincourt fixed him with two glittering eyes, but did not speak. He was standing with his back to the center table, and resting both hands upon it. It was a favorite attitude of his. Again Sir John felt compelled to protest. "Ormsby, I will not listen to this sort of thing any longer. It is shameful--shameful!" But the other had not done yet. He was determined to have his say out at every cost. The concentrated venom of years had at length found an outlet. "Somnambulism, indeed!" he sneered. "Tell that to the marines. Now we can understand why, twenty years ago, you were so anxious that Gumley should go scot free, and why you lied about the locket; for I have no doubt it was a lie. Now----" "Stop!" broke in Drelincourt, with uplifted right hand. "That is a point about which I have something to say. Knowing Gumley to be innocent of my wife's death, I did my best at the time to secure his acquittal; but bear in mind this--that had the verdict gone against him, I should most assuredly have given myself up then as I am giving myself up today. From the first I swore that, whatever else I might be guilty of, his death should not be laid to my charge. Sir John, a few moments, if you please." Out of the library there opened a much smaller room, where most of Roden Marsh's work was done. Towards this Drelincourt now led the way. "What can he have to say to Sir John that he doesn't want me to hear?" asked Ormsby of himself, as he stood staring after the others with a mingled expression of curiosity and distrust. "After all, what does it matter? It's enough for me that, of his own accord, Drelincourt has put the hangman's rope round his neck. Now that he has confessed, what a blind fool I feel myself to have been not to have suspected the truth long ago. A score of things occur to me, any one of which ought to have sufficed to give me an inkling of it. And yet, not even his wife has the ghost of a suspicion--or so he says! Then let me be the first to enlighten her! A score of years ago his hand stabbed my sister to the heart; but there are more ways of stabbing a person to the heart than one." A slow, cruel smile crept over his face. He nodded his head twice, as if in approval of what he had decided upon. Then, seating himself at the writing table, and having sought for and found the requisite materials, for the next three or four minutes he wrote busily. When he had done, he inclosed what he had written in an envelope, addressed the latter, and rang the bell. "Give this into Mrs. Drelincourt's own hands--and as soon as possible," he said to Wicks, as he handed him the letter.