第69章 CHAPTER XVII(4)

"You said in your evidence that Captain Tremayne arrived at Monsanto between half-past eleven and twenty minutes to twelve?"

"Yes, sir."

"You told us, I think, that you determined this by the fact that you came on duty at eleven o'clock, and that it would be half-an-hour or a little more after that when Captain Tremayne arrived?"

"Yes, sir."

"That is quite in agreement with the evidence of your sergeant.

Now tell the court where you were during the half-hour that followed - until you heard the guard being turned out by the sergeant."

"Pacing in front of quarters, sir."

"Did you notice the windows of the building at all during that time?"

"I can't say that I did, sir."

"Why not?"

"Why not?" echoed the private.

"Yes - why not? Don't repeat my words. How did it happen that you didn't notice the windows?"

"Because they were in darkness, sir."

O'Moy's eyes gleamed. "All of them?"

"Certainly, sir, all of them."

"You are quite certain of that?"

"Oh, quite certain, sir. If a light had shown from one of them I couldn't have failed to notice it."

"That will do."

"Captain Tremayne - " began the president.

"I have no questions for the witness, sir," Tremayne announced.

Sir Harry's face expressed surprise. "After the statement he has just made?" he exclaimed, and thereupon he again invited the prisoner, in a voice that was as grave as his countenance, to cross-examine he witness; he did more than invite - he seemed almost to plead.

But Tremayne, preserving by a miracle his outward calm, for all that inwardly he was filled with despair and chagrin to see what a pit he had dug for himself by his falsehood, declined to ask any questions.

Private Bates retired, and Mullins was recalled. A gloom seemed to have settled now upon the court. A moment ago their way had seemed fairly clear to its members, and they had been inwardly congratulating themselves that they were relieved from the grim necessity of passing sentence upon a brother officer esteemed by all who knew him. But now a subtle change had crept in. The statement drawn by Sir Terence from the sentry appeared flatly to contradict Captain Tremayne's own account of his movements on the night in question.

"You told the court," O'Moy addressed the witness Mullins, consulting his notes as he did so, "that on the night on which Count Samoval met his death, I sent you at ten minutes past twelve to take a letter to the sergeant of the guard, an urgent letter which was to be forwarded to its destination first thing on the following morning. And it was in fact in the course of going upon this errand that you discovered the prisoner kneeling beside the body of Count Samoval. This is correct, is it not?"

"It is, sir."

" Will you now inform the court to whom that letter was addressed?"

"It was addressed to the Commissary-General."

"You read the superscription?"

"I am not sure whether I did that, but I clearly remember, sir, that you told me at the time that it was for the Commissary-General."

Sir Terence signified that he had no more to ask, and again the president invited the prisoner to question the witness, to receive again the prisoner's unvarying refusal.

And now O'Moy rose in his place to announce that he had himself a further statement to, make to the court, a statement which he had not conceived necessary until he had heard the prisoner's account of his movements during the half-hour he had spent at Monsanto on the night of the duel.

"You have heard from Sergeant Flynn and my butler Mullins that the letter carried from me by the latter to the former on the night of the 28th was a letter for the Commissary-General of an urgent character, to be forwarded first thing in the morning. If the prisoner insists upon it, the Commissary-General himself may be brought before this court to confirm my assertion that that communication concerned a complaint from headquarters on the subject of the tents supplied to the third division Sir Thomas Picton's - at Celorico. The documents concerning that complaint - that is to say, the documents upon which we are to presume that the prisoner was at work during tine half-hour in question - were at the time in my possession in my own private study and in another wing of the building altogether."

Sir Terence sat down amid a rustling stir that ran through the court, but was instantly summoned to his feet again by the president.

"A moment, Sir Terence. The prisoner will no doubt desire to question you on that statement." And he looked with serious eyes at Captain Tremayne.

"I have no questions for Sir Terence, sir," was his answer.

Indeed, what question could he have asked? The falsehoods he had uttered had woven themselves into a rope about his neck, and he stood before his brother officers now in an agony of shame, a man discredited, as he believed.

"But no doubt you will desire the presence of the Commissary-General?" This was from Colonel Fletcher his own colonel and a man who esteemed him - and it was asked in accents that were pleadingly insistent.

"What purpose could it serve, sir? Sir Terence's words are partly confirmed by the evidence he has just elicited from Sergeant Flynn and his butler Mullins. Since he spent the night writing a letter to the Commissary, it is not to be doubted that the subject would be such as he states, since from my own knowledge it was the most urgent matter in our hands. And, naturally, he would not have written without having the documents at his side. To summon the Commissary-General would be unnecessarily to waste the time of the court. It follows that I must have been mistaken, and this I admit."

"But how could you be mistaken?" broke from the president.

"I realise your "difficulty in crediting, it. But there it is. Mistaken I was."

"Very well, sir." Sir Harry paused and then added "The court will be glad to hear you in answer to the further evidence adduced to refute your statement in your own defence."

"I have nothing further to say, sir," was Tremayne's answer.

"Nothing further?" The president seemed aghast. " Nothing, sir."