CHAPTER

MEN DO CURIOUS THINGS after they have passed through great stress. Eston with the possibility of a fate that might well have kept him wakeful, shrugged his shoulders after the formalities of his arrival at the police-station had been complied with, flung himself at full length on the hard couch in his cell and in a matter of seconds was asleep. For twelve hours he lay and was only roused at last by the abrupt grip of the jailer on his shoulder.

      "Don't you want anything to eat? It's gone two."

      Eston sat up, yawned, and stretched himself while he collected his thoughts. It was difficult off-hand for him to realize that he had reached the end. He frowned thoughtfully at the policeofficer who had charge of the station-cells.

      "Don't you want some grub sent in!" asked that functionary.

      A man under detention at a police-station is entitled if he cares to do so to have his meals purchased and sent in from outside. The police authorities as caterers are a little circumscribed. Eston understood the procedure.

      "I'd like some coffee and bacon and eggs, if you can get them," he said. "Tell me, where am I to know what they are going to charge me with?"

      "I can't tell you anything about that. I expect Mr. Garfield or someone will turn up during the day. Of course, if you want to see him—"

      He paused expectantly, but Eston shook his head. "Right-oh! I'll see about your food."

      As a fact, it was nearly seven o'clock that evening before any person other than the jailer intruded on Eston's privacy. Then he was ushered upstairs to a room of the station allotted to a divisional branch of the Criminal Investigation Department. Silverdale and Garfield were there with one or two other men he did not recognize. Uniformed constables were holding him by each arm, yet Eston contrived to assume somehow a manner of nonchalant ease. This, he knew, was probably one of the opening stages in his fight for life, and he was wary, cool, and well on his guard. He even arranged a smile.

      "Let him go!" ordered Garfield quietly; and the policemen fell back. "Take a seat, Mr. Eston, won't you?"

      "Thanks," said the prisoner.

      He sat down, facing the inspector, and crossed his legs. It would have needed a very keen observer to detect any tone of anxiety in his voice or manner. Yet Eston was worried, and his heart beat faster than its wont as he sat there waiting for what might happen.

      "You made a statement to me last night, or rather, early this morning," said the chief inspector. "I am going to read that over to you to give you an opportunity of rectifying or amending it."

      Eston moistened dry lips.

      "You read it tome then," he said. "Why go over it again?"

      The chief inspector gave a significant jerk of the head.

      "I want to be fair to you, Eston," he said.

      The prisoner gave an ironical laugh.

      Ignoring the interruption, Garfield went on:

      "There are inconsistencies and contradictions in your statement with the facts as we know them. Now's your chance to remedy any point on which you went wrong."

      He began reading. Eston listened attentively, a sardonic smile on his lips. Even then he was convinced that this was some new game of bluff set to entrap him into some damaging admission. Clever and unscrupulous man as be was, he was unable to conceive that he was being offered a real chance to amend his statement out of a sheer quixotic sense of fairness.

      Smoothly, monotonously, Garfield read on.

      There were facts with which Eston. could take no liberties, but on the other band he had avoided any damaging admission of matters which it was possible the police would be unable to prove. He denied point-blank that he knew Sir Harold Saxon, or that he had had any guilty knowledge of the murder. The meeting with Hilary Sloane and Nora Dring at Twyford Station he pictured as a perfectly accidental happening, in which they had appealed to him as an old friend to help them in some trouble. He did not then fully understand what the trouble was. Thereafter the incidents that occurred were the fruits of an altruistic chivalry that had led to compromising situations. The fire in the gambling house was sheer accident.

      He made no attempt to deny the fight in the tunnel. Indeed, the bulk of the statement, clever and plausible, though it was, was intended as the background upon which an ultimate defense might be founded by a clever lawyer. Eston was cutting his losses. It was on the river question that he had concentrated his resources. He had a complete and unquestionable alibi provable by a dozen witnesses as to Sir Harold Saxon's murder, on that he had taken infinite pains. If he went to prisonwell, some day he would come out. If he were convicted of murder—!

      "That's your statement," finished Garfield quietly. "Now l know as well as you do, Eston, that it's a tissue of lies!"

      Eston flared at him defiantly,

      "If you've made up your mind about it, why trouble me?" he asked.

      "Every inquiry we have made," went on Garfield, "fails to substantiate anything you say, except that it is clear that you were not present at the actual murder of Sir Harold Saxon. It is only right you should know that Knuckleduster and Velvet have told their stories."

      "Really?" Eston's voice was icy. "I don't quite see how that can concern me. I have told the truth."

      "You have nothing further to add-nothing to explain?"

      The crook shook his head doggedly. "I have been quite frank."

      "Then we'll finish this farce," said Garfield sternly.

      Eston, a constable at each elbow, found himself heading a procession down the narrow stairs into a lofty, bare charge-room. In the center of the room stood a solitary tall desk, against which leaned a meditative uniformed inspector, a pen behind his ear. He straightened up briskly as the little group entered, and became busy with an official form.

      Eston was led near the little iron dock that forms part of the fittings of every London charge-room, and is never used, and waited. Garfield strolled over to the uniformed inspector, and spoke in a low voice, while the other wrote rapidly. Eston regarded them with an apparent listless indifference that marked a very real alertness of mind. Little legal phrases, repeated by one or the other, caught his car now and again.

      "Henry John Eston?" said the uniformed man at last.

      Eston muttered an assent.

      "You are charged at the instance of Chief Detective Inspector Garfield that you did kill and murder Sir Harold Saxon—"

      "What!"

      After his careful alibi, Eston was staggered. It was incredible, impossible, that the murder could really be brought home to him.

      "That is utterly false. I had nothing to do with that, as Mr. Garfield knows very well."

      Garfield held up a warning hand.

      "In law, a person who plans and incites a murder is as guilty as a person who actually commits the deed," he said. "You know that, although Knuckleduster Jim and Nora Dring were your dupes, Harold Saxon might have been alive at this moment had it not been for you."

      A constable put out a hand to steady the prisoner, who reeled slightly on his feet. A curious flush spread over his face that was succeeded by a sickly pallor. He spread out his hands helplessly.

      "Have they talked?" he demanded,

      Garfield nodded grimly.

      Then Eston got some sort of a grip on his reeling senses. It was impossible that all his precautions could go for nothing. It is only an innocent man who is utterly confounded by an unexpected charge. What, be reflected, could they prove, after all? If Knuckleduster had squealed—he still clung to the "if"—there would still be considerable difficulty in linking up his connection with the capital charge. Garfield was bluffing. He was sure of that.

      "You are also charged," went on the monotonous voice of the inspector, "that you did kill and murder Nora Saxon."

      "Is she dead?" asked Eston.

      "She died in hospital a little more than an hour ago," said Garfield.

      In a daze, Eston heard the recital, in its quaint, legal jargon, go on.

      "Did feloniously attempt to kill and murder one James Silverdale. Did commit arson."

      It ended at last.

      "Those are the charges against you, Eston," concluded the man at the desk. "If you have any reply to make, it will be taken down in writing, and may be used as evidence against you."

      A sudden access of inner rage shook the prisoner. His fists clenched and his whole form quivered.

      "It's a lie!" he declared vehemently. "A series of dastardly, abominable lies! Curse you, Garfield!"

      "That will, be all, " said the station-inspector, without emotion. "Take him below."

      Unresisting, Eston allowed himself to be escorted back to his cell.