“It won’t make much difference, of course,” he began, and his voice sounded odd and small and tired in the great room, “but I think I should like you to know that all this stopped three weeks ago.  Hilary—­we—­decided then to—­to give it up, and run ‘The Gem’ on different lines in future.  We couldn’t easily undo the past—­but—­but there’s been nothing of the sort since then, and we didn’t mean there to be again.  Oh, I know that doesn’t make much difference, of course....”

The only difference that mattered was that Denis frowned.  Incidentally—­only that didn’t matter—­Cheriton laughed curtly, and Lord Evelyn wearily said, “Oh, stop lying, stop lying.  I’m so unutterably tired of your lies....  You think we don’t know that your brother accepted a bribe this very afternoon....  Tell him, Jim.”

So Jim told him.  He told him shortly, and in plain words, and not as if he was pleased with his triumph in skilful detection, which he no doubt was.

“I rather wanted to sift this business, Margerison, as I had suspected for a good while more than I could prove.  So to-day I sent a man to your brother, commissioning him to pretend to be an art-dealer and offer a sum of money for the insertion in ‘The Gem’ of an appreciative notice of some spurious objects.  As perhaps you are aware, the offer was accepted....  It may seem to you an underhand way of getting evidence—­but the case was peculiar.”

He didn’t look at Peter; his manner, though distant, was not now unfriendly; perhaps, having gained his object and sifted the business, there was room for compassion.  It was a pity that Peter had made things worse by that last lie, though.

“I see,” said Peter.  “It’s all very complete.”

And then he laughed, as he always did when disasters were so very complete as to leave no crevice of escape to creep through.

“You laugh,” said Lord Evelyn, and rose from his chair, trembling a little.  “You laugh.  It’s been an admirable joke, hasn’t it?  And you always had plenty of sense of humour.”

Peter didn’t hear him.  He wasn’t laughing any more; he was looking at Denis, who had never looked at him once, but sat smoking with averted face.

“Shall I go now?” said Peter.  “There isn’t much more to say, is there?  And what there is, perhaps you will tell us to-morrow....  It seems so silly to say one is sorry about a thing like this—­but I am, you know, horribly.  I have been all along, ever since I found out.  You think that must be a lie, because I didn’t tell.  But things are so mixed and difficult—­and it’s not a lie.”  He was looking at Lord Evelyn now, at the delicate, working face that stabbed at his pity and shame.  After all, it was Lord Evelyn, not Denis, whom they had injured and swindled and fooled; one must remember that.  To Lord Evelyn he made his further feeble self-exculpation.  “And, you know, I did really think Hilary had dropped it weeks ago; he said he would.  And that’s not a lie, either.”  But he believed they all thought it was, and a silly one at that.