We telegraphed up, at once.  Fortunately, both men were disengaged, and both keenly interested in the case.  By that evening, Horace Mayfield was talking it all over with me in the hotel at Southampton.  “Well, Hubert, my boy,” he said, “a woman, we know, can do a great deal”; he smiled his familiar smile, like a genial fat toad; “but if your Yorke-Bannerman succeeds in getting a confession out of Sebastian, she’ll extort my admiration.”  He paused a moment, then he added, in an afterthought:  “I say that she’ll extort my admiration; but, mind you, I don’t know that I shall feel inclined to believe it.  The facts have always appeared to me—­strictly between ourselves, you know—­to admit of only one explanation.”

“Wait and see,” I answered.  “You think it more likely that Miss Wade will have persuaded Sebastian to confess to things that never happened than that he will convince you of Yorke-Bannerman’s innocence?”

The great Q.C. fingered his cigarette-holder affectionately.

“You hit it first time,” he answered.  “That is precisely my attitude.  The evidence against our poor friend was so peculiarly black.  It would take a great deal to make me disbelieve it.”

“But surely a confession—­”

“Ah, well, let me hear the confession, and then I shall be better able to judge.”

Even as he spoke Hilda had entered the room.

“There will be no difficulty about that, Mr. Mayfield.  You shall hear it, and I trust that it will make you repent for taking so black a view of the case of your own client.”

“Without prejudice, Miss Bannerman, without prejudice,” said the lawyer, with some confusion.  “Our conversation is entirely between ourselves, and to the world I have always upheld that your father was an innocent man.”

But such distinctions are too subtle for a loving woman.

“He was an innocent man,” said she, angrily.  “It was your business not only to believe it, but to prove it.  You have neither believed it nor proved it; but if you will come upstairs with me, I will show you that I have done both.”

Mayfield glanced at me and shrugged his fat shoulders.  Hilda had led the way, and we both followed her.  In the room of the sick man our other witnesses were waiting:  a tall, dark, austere man who was introduced to me as Dr. Blake Crawford, whose name I had heard as having watched the case for Sebastian at the time of the investigation.  There were present also a commissioner of oaths, and Dr. Mayby, a small local practitioner, whose attitude towards the great scientist was almost absurdly reverential.  The three men were grouped at the foot of the bed, and Mayfield and I joined them.  Hilda stood beside the dying man, and rearranged the pillow against which he was propped.  Then she held some brandy to his lips.  “Now!” said she.

The stimulant brought a shade of colour into his ghastly cheeks, and the old quick, intelligent gleam came back into his deep sunk eyes.