“Liar!  Do you think Kitty has any secrets from me?  As soon as I discovered your two marriages I determined to have you arrested for—­your treachery.  But when I found you had, as I thought, put Wimp on the wrong scent, when I felt sure that by arresting Mortlake he was going to make a greater ass of himself than even nature had been able to do, then I forgave you.  I let you walk about the earth—­and drink—­freely.  Now it is Wimp who crows—­everybody pats him on the back—­they call him the mystery man of the Scotland Yard tribe.  Poor Tom Mortlake will be hanged, and all through your telling Wimp about Jessie Dymond!”

“It was you yourself,” said Denzil, sullenly.  “Everybody was giving it up.  But you said ’Let us find out all that Arthur Constant did in the last few months of his life.’  Wimp couldn’t miss stumbling on Jessie sooner or later.  I’d have throttled Constant, if I had known he’d touched her,” he wound up with irrelevant indignation.

Grodman winced at the idea that he himself had worked ad majorem gloriam of Wimp.  And yet, had not Mrs. Wimp let out as much at the Christmas dinner?

“What’s past is past,” he said gruffly.  “But if Tom Mortlake hangs, you go to Portland.”

“How can I help Tom hanging?”

“Help the agitation as much as you can.  Write letters under all sorts of names to all the papers.  Get everybody you know to sign the great petition.  Find out where Jessie Dymond is—­the girl who holds the proof of Mortlake’s innocence.”

“You really believe him innocent?”

“Don’t be satirical, Denzil.  Haven’t I taken the chair at all the meetings?  Am I not the most copious correspondent of the Press?”

“I thought it was only to spite Wimp.”

“Rubbish.  It’s to save poor Tom.  He no more murdered Arthur Constant than—­you did!” He laughed an unpleasant laugh.

Denzil bade him farewell, frigid with fear.

Grodman was up to his ears in letters and telegrams.  Somehow he had become the leader of the rescue party—­suggestions, subscriptions came from all sides.  The suggestions were burnt, the subscriptions acknowledged in the papers and used for hunting up the missing girl.  Lucy Brent headed the list with a hundred pounds.  It was a fine testimony to her faith in her dead lover’s honour.

The release of the Jury had unloosed “The Greater Jury,” which always now sits upon the smaller.  Every means was taken to nullify the value of the “palladium of British liberty.”  The foreman and the jurors were interviewed, the judge was judged, and by those who were no judges.  The Home Secretary (who had done nothing beyond accepting office under the Crown) was vituperated, and sundry provincial persons wrote confidentially to the Queen.  Arthur Constant’s backsliding cheered many by convincing them that others were as bad as themselves; and well-to-do tradesmen saw in Mortlake’s wickedness the pernicious effects of Socialism.  A dozen