“After what Lady Lundie has said, in my wife’s presence,” Arnold burst out, in his straightforward, boyish way, “I think I ought to be allowed to say a word on my side.  I only want to explain how it was I came to go to Craig Fernie at all—­and I challenge Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn to deny it, if he can.”

His voice rose at the last words, and his eyes brightened with indignation as he looked at Geoffrey.

Mr. Moy appealed to his learned friend.

“With submission, Sir Patrick, to your better judgment,” he said, “this young gentleman’s proposal seems to be a little out of place at the present stage of the proceedings.”

“Pardon me,” answered Sir Patrick.  “You have yourself described the proceedings as representing an informal inquiry.  An informal proposal—­with submission to your better judgment, Mr. Moy—­is hardly out of place, under those circumstances, is it?”

Mr. Moy’s inexhaustible modesty gave way, without a struggle.  The answer which he received had the effect of puzzling him at the outset of the investigation.  A man of Sir Patrick’s experience must have known that Arnold’s mere assertion of his own innocence could be productive of nothing but useless delay in the proceedings.  And yet he sanctioned that delay.  Was he privately on the watch for any accidental circumstance which might help him to better a case that he knew to be a bad one?

Permitted to speak, Arnold spoke.  The unmistakable accent of truth was in every word that he uttered.  He gave a fairly coherent account of events, from the time when Geoffrey had claimed his assistance at the lawn-party to the time when he found himself at the door of the inn at Craig Fernie.  There Sir Patrick interfered, and closed his lips.  He asked leave to appeal to Geoffrey to confirm him.  Sir Patrick amazed Mr. Moy by sanctioning this irregularity also.  Arnold sternly addressed himself to Geoffrey.

“Do you deny that what I have said is true?” he asked.

Mr. Moy did his duty by his client.  “You are not bound to answer,” he said, “unless you wish it yourself.”

Geoffrey slowly lifted his heavy head, and confronted the man whom he had betrayed.

“I deny every word of it,” he answered—­with a stolid defiance of tone and manner.

“Have we had enough of assertion and counter-assertion, Sir Patrick, by this time?” asked Mr. Moy, with undiminished politeness.

After first forcing Arnold—­with some little difficulty—­to control himself, Sir Patrick raised Mr. Moy’s astonishment to the culminating point.  For reasons of his own, he determined to strengthen the favorable impression which Arnold’s statement had plainly produced on his wife before the inquiry proceeded a step farther.

“I must throw myself on your indulgence, Mr. Moy,” he said.  “I have not had enough of assertion and counter-assertion, even yet.”

Mr. Moy leaned back in his chair, with a mixed expression of bewilderment and resignation.  Either his colleague’s intellect was in a failing state—­or his colleague had some purpose in view which had not openly asserted itself yet.  He began to suspect that the right reading of the riddle was involved in the latter of those two alternatives.  Instead of entering any fresh protest, he wisely waited and watched.