"In anything in which you were concerned one can always count on your playing the coward."
"But that night, after what you had said to me, I made up my mind that I could stand it no longer. I looked up Dodwell and I told him so. He laughed, as he always did; then when he saw I was in earnest----"
"I saw you were drunk."
"When he saw I was in earnest, he said that if I would turn up after the dance he would talk things over with me then."
"I warn you once more--look after that tongue of yours."
"I should advise you, Dodwell," struck in Clifford, "to begin by looking after your own. You keep on talking about Draycott"s cowardice, while all the time you seem to be in mortal terror of what he is going to say."
Noel Draycott continued as if he had not been interrupted.
"When the others went upstairs I stayed behind."
"But where were you?"
The question, eagerly asked, came from Violet Forster.
"At first I was in the conservatory."
"But weren"t the lights out?"
"They had been; I turned some of them on again. Dodwell came to me. We started quarrelling right away."
"You were quarrelling drunk." This was Dodwell.
"I told him that I meant to tell you, Miss Forster, the whole truth about that poker business in the morning; I knew you were interested in Beaton, and that you had a right to be the first to hear. Afterwards, I informed him, I should make it known in the regiment. When he saw that I meant what I said, he threatened me."
"You miserable animal--threatened you!"
"When, in spite of his threats, I made it clear that nothing would keep me from doing what I said, he got worse. He would not let me leave him.
I didn"t want to have a row with him; I knew there would be more than enough scandal anyhow; I was in a house in which I was a stranger. As you know, the whole lot of us were asked to the dance, and I had no acquaintance with either my host or hostess; but it was only after a sort of rough and tumble that I managed to slip away."
He paused, as if to enable himself to recall quite clearly what had occurred. Dodwell, seizing a billiard cue which rested against a chair, glared at him as if he would have liked to continue the quarrel where it had left off.
"He followed me; I don"t know the geography of the house, but I know that we came to what seemed to be a sort of drawing-room in which there was a lot of gilded chairs and furniture."
"I know," said Miss Forster. She glanced at Major Reith. "You remember?"
"Perfectly--am I ever likely to forget?"
Draycott went on.
"In the scrimmage we had we knocked the things all over the place. We made such an awful din that I kept on wondering how it was that n.o.body heard us."
"Someone did hear you--I did. And Major Reith heard you also."
This again was Miss Forster.
"He wouldn"t let me leave the room until I"d promised that I wouldn"t say a word about what I said I would, and I wouldn"t promise. I was no match for him; he"s a bigger and a stronger man than I am; he hammered me a good deal, and I told him what I thought of him. There was a sort of a club lying on a table; he sent me flying against the table, the table went over, and I with it; the club fell on to the floor. I told him again what I thought of him as I was going over. I suppose that made him madder than ever. He picked up the club, and he struck at me with it. I put up my left arm to ward off the blow, and he broke it--just there."
Mr. Draycott held up his left arm, touching it between the wrist and the elbow.
"I heard the bone snap. I was trying to get up from the floor when he hit me a second time; that time I think it must have got me on the head--down I went again, for good. Yet I was conscious that he kept on hitting me as I lay motionless. What is still queerer--I can"t explain it, but I had an extraordinary feeling that Sydney Beaton had come into the room, that he saw Dodwell raining blows down on me, that he said something, that Dodwell gave a yell at the sight of him, and ran away.
That"s all I can remember of what took place at Avonham."
"It seems to be a pretty good deal." This was Clifford. He turned to Dodwell. "What do you think?"
"It"s a farrago of lies."
"Somehow, Dodwell, you don"t look as if it were a farrago of lies. I don"t want to prejudice the minds of the judge and jury before whom you will possibly be brought, but if I were betting I should be inclined to lay odds--against you. Do you deny that you did meet Draycott in the conservatory after the rest of us had gone to bed?"
"What right have you to ask me questions?"
"I see; that"s the tone you take! What right has anyone to ask you questions? As I expected--you deny that you quarrelled with Draycott?"
"What have my private affairs to do with you?"
"Your private affairs? It has come to that! You call attempted murder your private affair? Do you deny that you did strike Draycott as he says?"
"I deny everything."
"I see--a general denial. You know, Dodwell, you should have started denying at the first. When you tacitly admit that you did meet Draycott, and that you did quarrel with him, you have already reached the point at which a general denial only tells against you. What I don"t understand, Draycott, is, where have you been since that night? I don"t know if you are aware that the British public has been taking a most lively interest in your private affairs, and that all sorts of more or less interested persons have been searching for you high and low. It"s a good time ago, you know, since the Easter ball. The puzzle is, in what unfindable place have you been hidden all this while?"
"I"ve been with Beaton."
"You"ve been--where? Pardon me, Miss Forster, you were going to speak."
"I--I was only going to ask him what he meant by--by saying that he has been with Mr. Beaton."
"It is not altogether easy to explain; you will get a fuller explanation from someone else; I can only tell you what I know. The last thing I remembered at Avonham was, as I have told you, that Dodwell was beating me about the head with a club as I lay on the floor."
"You delightful person, Mr. Dodwell." The interruption came from Frank Clifford. "Mixed up with it was the feeling that Beaton was in the room. Then, I suppose, I lost consciousness. When I came to myself again I couldn"t make out what had happened, or where I was. Then by degrees I began to understand that I was in bed, in a strange room, and that Beaton was leaning over me. "Why, Syd!" I said--it wasn"t a very brilliant remark to make, but I remember that I did make it. What he said I don"t know, I fancy I must have slipped back into unconsciousness again. To make a long story short, when I did come really to myself again, I found that I was in Beaton"s rooms."
"But how on earth did you get there?" demanded Major Reith. "When I last saw you I could have sworn that you were lying dead on the floor of that room at Avonham. Directly my back was turned, did you get up and walk to Beaton"s rooms?"
"That"s a part of the story with which I"m not very well posted. It wasn"t only imagination when, while Dodwell was clubbing me, I felt that Beaton had come into the room; he had, and Dodwell had seen him--and he saw what Dodwell was doing to me. He will be able to bear witness to that part of my story, as Dodwell is probably aware."
Suddenly, it seemed, that Mr. Dodwell had decided to take up a new position as regarded the last part of Noel Draycott"s story.
"I don"t deny that I did strike him, I never have denied it, but what I did was only done in self-defence."
"While a man was lying on the floor you struck him, with a club, in self-defence?"
"He had been threatening me, and telling all sorts of lies, and I was half beside myself with rage, and I meant to give him the thrashing he deserved, and if I went a little too far it was because I had been drinking, as he had, and was mad with fury, and didn"t know what I was doing--and there you are."
"And all this time the world has been wondering what became of Draycott, and you never so much as hinted that you knew."