"Is it not true that Sinclair paid you a visit at your offices a few days before his murder?" counsel asked.
"Will you tell us what transpired at that interview?"
"Well, it scarcely amounted to an interview," Deane answered composedly. "The man was drunk, and I found him offensive. He brandished the document at me on which the present case is founded, and I suspected him of an attempt at blackmail. I had him thrown out."
"Yet a few days afterwards you commissioned Rowan--the man who murdered Sinclair--to obtain that document from him," counsel said, amidst some sensation.
"Scarcely that," Deane answered. "Rowan, who had been a friend of mine in South Africa, and was a man of an altogether different stamp than Sinclair, called upon me a few days later. I told him the circumstances."
"You incited him to procure that document from Sinclair," counsel declared.
"I cannot admit that," Deane answered. "I told him that I had declined to be blackmailed by Sinclair, but that after all I would prefer to pay a reasonable sum of money for the document in question. Rowan had been on more friendly terms with Sinclair than any of us, and I thought that he might induce him to listen to reason."
"If the document was valueless, why should you bother about it?"
"I'm afraid that you don't know much about the mining world," Deane replied amiably. "Any prejudicial report, however malicious, however false, affects the market, and one must always consider one's stockholders."
"Very well, then," counsel said, "we come to this. You deputed Rowan to see what he could do with Sinclair. Do you realize your responsibility in this matter? You are aware of what happened?"
"Certainly," Deane answered. "I shall never cease to regret it. Sinclair was mad drunk and the two men quarrelled. The blow which killed him was struck in self-defence."
"I stood by Rowan when he died," Deane said, with a sudden note of solemnity in his tone. "He told me the truth then, and the truth is what I have told you."
"Nevertheless, he stole the document," counsel continued. "It was discovered afterwards in the possession of Miss Rowan."
"So I have heard," Deane answered calmly. "It was a pity that she did not hand it over to me."
"You would have destroyed it, I suppose?"