“...  The reason why I mistrusted the story of the revolver?  Why, upon examination, that instrument belonging to Miss Brellier was a little too clean and well-oiled to have been out of use for a matter of five months or so.  The worthy user of it had cleaned and polished it up, so as to be sure of its action, and re-oiled it.  So the ‘dog story’ was exploded almost at its birth.  The rest was easy to follow up, and knowing the position of things between Borkins and his master (from both sides, so to speak), I began to put two and two together.  Borkins has, this moment, most agreeably told me that my answer to the sum is correct.  But things worked in well for him, I must say.  That Sir Nigel should actually fire a shot upon that very night was a stroke of pure luck for the servant who hated him.  And it made his chance of fabricating the whole plot against Sir Nigel a good deal easier.  Whether he would have stolen the revolver had that shot at the Frozen Flames—­for which Sir Nigel has been so sorely tried—­never been fired, I cannot say, but that doubtless would have been the course he would have taken.  Luck favoured him upon that dreadful night—­but now that luck has changed.  His own action has been his undoing.  If he had not given vent to this feeling of hatred that he cherished in his heart for a master who was of such different stuff of which he himself was made, the whole infernal plot might never have been revealed.  And yet—­who can tell?

“My lord and gentlemen of the jury, the tale is told.  Justice has been done an innocent man, and the rest of its doing lies in your capable hands.  I ask your permission to be seated.”

His voice trailed off into silence, and across the court a murmur arose, like the hum of some giant airplane growing gradually nearer and nearer.  A sort of strangled sob came from the back of Cleek’s chair, and he turned his head to smile into ’Toinette’s wet eyes.  In their depths gratitude and sorrow were inexplicably mingled.  His hand went out to her; she ran toward him from her place, and in spite of judge and jury, in spite of the order of the law, knelt down there at his side and pressed her warm lips against his hand.

CHAPTER XXVIII

“TOWARD MORNING....”

The flower in Cleek’s buttonhole was jauntily erect, his immaculately garbed figure fitted in perfectly with every detail of the whole scene of which he was a part.  He looked—­and was—­the exquisitely turned-out man-about-town.  Only his eyes told of other things, and they, as the organs welled to the sounds of the wedding march lighted up with something that spoke of the man within rather than the man without.  He turned from his position at the altar (where he was fulfilling his duties as best man to Sir Nigel Merriton) and glanced back over the curve of his shoulder to where a girl sat, bending forward in the empty pew, her face alight, her eyes,