“No. I left the house before Dorothy was awake or the servants were down. She knows nothing. Dorothy and I have not hit it off lately.”
Cornish made no answer. He was ringing the bell, and ordered coffee when the waiter came.
“Haven't met any incident in life yet,” he said cheerfully, “that seemed to justify missing out meals.”
The incident that awaited them was not, however, a pleasant one, though the magistrate in attendance afforded a courteous assistance in the observance of necessary formalities. Both men made a deposition before him.
“I know something,” he said to Cornish, “of this malgamite business. We have had our eye upon Von Holzen for some time--if only on account of the death-rate of the city.”
They breathed more freely when they were out in the street. Cornish made some unimportant remark, which the other did not answer. So they walked on in silence. Presently, Cornish glanced at his companion, and was startled at the sight of his face, which was grey, and glazed all over with perspiration, as an actor's face may sometimes be at the end of a great act. Then he remembered that Roden had not spoken for a long time.
“The things they had laid on the table beside him. The things they found in his hands and his pockets.”
“The knife, you mean,” said Cornish, whose nerves were worthy of the blood that flowed in his veins, “and some letters?”
“Yes; the knife was mine. Everybody knows it. It is an old dagger that has always lain on a table in the drawing room at the Villa des Dunes.”
“I have never been in the drawing room at the Villa des Dunes, except once by lamplight,” said Cornish, indifferently.
Roden turned and looked at him with eyes still dull with fear.
“And among the letters was the one you wrote to me making the appointment. He must have stolen it from the pocket of my office coat, which I never wear while I am working.” Cornish was nodding his head slowly. “I see,” he said, at length--“I see. It was a pretty _coup_. To kill me, and fix the crime on you--and hang you?”
“Yes,” said Roden, with a sudden laugh, which neither forgot to his dying day.
They walked on in silence. For there are times in nearly every man's life when events seem suddenly to outpace thought, and we can only act as seems best at the moment; times when the babbler is still and the busybody at rest; times when the cleverest of us must recognize that the long and short of it all is that man agitates himself and God leads him. At the corner of the Vyverberg they parted--Cornish to return to his hotel, Roden to go back to the works. His carriage was awaiting him in a shady corner of the Binnenhof. For Roden had his carriage now, and, like many possessing suddenly such a vehicle, spent much time and thought in getting his money's worth out of it.