The Snare Part 31

"Of that I have no knowledge."

Invited to cross-examine the witness, Captain Tremayne again declined, admitting freely that all that Sir Terence had said was strictly true.

Then Carruthers, who appeared to be intent to act as the prisoner's friend, took up the examination of his chief.

"It is of course admitted that Captain Tremayne enjoyed free access to Monsanto practically at all hours in his capacity as your military secretary, Sir Terence?"

"Admitted," said Sir Terence.

"And it is therefore possible that he might have come upon the body of the deceased just as Mullins came upon it?"

"It is possible, certainly. The evidence to come will no doubt determine whether it is a tenable opinion."

"Admitting this, then, the att.i.tude in which Captain Tremayne was discovered would be a perfectly natural one? It would be natural that he should investigate the ident.i.ty and hurt of the man he found there?"

"Certainly."

"But it would hardly be natural that he should linger by the body of a man he had himself slain, thereby incurring the risk of being discovered?"

"That is a question for the court rather than for me."

"Thank you, Sir Terence." And, as no one else desired to question him, Sir Terence resumed his seat, and Lady O'Moy was called.

She came in very white and trembling, accompanied by Miss Armytage, whose admittance was suffered by the court, since she would not be called upon to give evidence. One of the officers of the Fourteenth seated on the extreme right of the table made gallant haste to set a chair for her ladys.h.i.+p, which she accepted gratefully.

The oath administered, she was invited gently by Major Swan to tell the court what she knew of the case before them.

"But--but I know nothing," she faltered in evident distress, and Sir Terence, his elbow leaning on the table, covered his mouth with his hand that its movements might not betray him. His eyes glowered upon her with a ferocity that was hardly dissembled.

"If you will take the trouble to tell the court what you saw from your balcony," the major insisted, "the court will be grateful."

Perceiving her agitation, and attributing it to nervousness, moved also by that delicate loveliness of hers, and by deference to the adjutant-generates lady, Sir Harry Stapleton intervened.

"Is Lady O'Moy's evidence really necessary?" he asked. "Does it contribute any fresh fact regarding the discovery of the body?"

"No, sir," Major Swan admitted. "It is merely a corroboration of what we have already heard from Mullins and Sir Terence."

"Then why unnecessarily distress this lady?"

"Oh, for my own part, sir--" the prosecutor was submitting, when Sir Terence cut in:

"I think that in the prisoner's interest perhaps Lady O'Moy will not mind being distressed a little." It was at her he looked, and for her and Tremayne alone that he intended the cutting lash of sarcasm concealed from the rest of the court by his smooth accent. "Mullins has said, I think, that her ladys.h.i.+p was on the balcony when he came into the quadrangle. Her evidence therefore, takes us further back in point of time than does Mullins's." Again the sarcastic double meaning was only for those two. "Considering that the prisoner is being tried for his life, I do not think we should miss anything that may, however slightly, affect our judgment."

"Sir Terence is right, I think, sir," the judge-advocate supported.

"Very well, then," said the president. "Proceed, if you please."

"Will you be good enough to tell the court, Lady O'Moy, how you came to be upon the balcony?"

Her pallor had deepened, and her eyes looked more than ordinarily large and child-like as they turned this way and that to survey the members of the court. Nervously she dabbed her lips with a handkerchief before answering mechanically as she had been schooled:

"I heard a cry, and I ran out--"

"You were in bed at the time, of course?" quoth her husband, interrupting.

"What on earth has that to do with it, Sir Terence?" the president rebuked him, out of his earnest desire to cut this examination as short as possible.

"The question, sir, does not seem to me to be without point," replied O'Moy. He was judicially smooth and self-contained. "It is intended to enable us to form an opinion as to the lapse of time between her ladys.h.i.+p's hearing the cry and reaching the balcony."

Grudgingly the president admitted the point, and the question was repeated.

"Ye-es," came Lady O'Moy's tremulous, faltering answer, "I was in bed."

"But not asleep--or were you asleep?" rapped O'Moy again, and in answer to the president's impatient glance again explained himself: "We should know whether perhaps the cry might not have been repeated several times before her ladys.h.i.+p heard it. That is of value."

"It would be more regular," ventured the judge-advocate, "if Sir Terence would reserve his examination of the witness until she has given her evidence."

"Very well," grumbled Sir Terence, and he sat back, foiled for the moment in his deliberate intent to torture her into admissions that must betray her if made.

"I was not asleep," she told the court, thus answering her husband's last question. "I heard the cry, and ran to the balcony at once.

That--that is all."

"But what did you see from the balcony?" asked Major Swan.

"It was night, and of course--it--it was dark," she answered.

"Surely not dark, Lady O'Moy? There was a moon, I think--a full moon?"

"Yes; but--but--there was a good deal of shadow in the garden, and--and I couldn't see anything at first."

"But you did eventually?"

"Oh, eventually! Yes, eventually." Her fingers were twisting and untwisting the handkerchief they held, and her distressed loveliness was very piteous to see. Yet it seems to have occurred to none of them that this distress and the minor contradictions into which it led her were the result of her intent to conceal the truth, of her terror lest it should nevertheless be wrung from her. Only O'Moy, watching her and reading in her every word and glance and gesture the signs of her falsehood, knew the hideous thing she strove to hide, even, it seemed, at the cost of her lover's life. To his lacerated soul her torture was a balm. Gloating, he watched her, then, and watched her lover, marvelling at the blackguard's complete self-mastery and impa.s.sivity even now.

Major Swan was urging her gently.

"Eventually, then, what was it that you saw?"

"I saw a man lying on the ground, and another kneeling over him, and then--almost at once--Mullins came out, and--"

"I don't think we need take this any further, Major Swan," the president again interposed. "We have heard what happened after Mullins came out."

"Unless the prisoner wishes--" began the judge-advocate.

"By no means," said Tremayne composedly. Although outwardly impa.s.sive, he had been watching her intently, and it was his eyes that had perturbed her more than anything in that court. It was she who must determine for him how to proceed; how far to defend himself. He had hoped that by now d.i.c.k Butler might have been got away, so that it would have been safe to tell the whole truth, although he began to doubt how far that could avail him, how far, indeed, it would be believed in the absence of d.i.c.k Butler. Her evidence told him that such hopes as he may have entertained had been idle, and that he must depend for his life simply upon the court's inability to bring the guilt home to him. In this he had some confidence, for, knowing himself innocent, it seemed to him incredible that he could be proven guilty. Failing that, nothing short of the discovery of the real slayer of Samoval could save him--and that was a matter wrapped in the profoundest mystery. The only man who could conceivably have fought Samoval in such a place was Sir Terence himself. But then it was utterly inconceivable that in that case Sir Terence, who was the very soul of honour, should not only keep silent and allow another man to suffer, but actually sit there in judgment upon that other; and, besides, there was no quarrel, nor ever had been, between Sir Terence and Samoval.

"There is," Major Swan was saying, "just one other matter upon which I should like to question Lady O'Moy." And thereupon he proceeded to do so: "Your ladys.h.i.+p will remember that on the day before the event in which Count Samoval met his death he was one of a small luncheon party at your house here in Monsanto."

"Yes," she replied, wondering fearfully what might be coming now.