ts. 'You can send for the police, William,' he
said to master, 'because as a matter of fact, I saw the
black-whiskered gentleman with the necklace in his hand. I did get
home late to-night, but not so late as you thought, and I came in
through the open door and was up in my dressing-room when that
scoundrel sneaked into my wife's room and took the necklace to ruin
an innocent girl with. What a thorough scoundrel you are, though,
aren't you?' he said to John.

Then John, he shrugged his shoulders as much as to say, 'It's all up
now,' and he said to Mr. Oliver very politely, 'You are always fond
of poking your nose into other people's business, sir, and I daresay
you'd like to know why I did it. Oh yes. You know everything, you
do,' says John, growing very white, and speaking angry and quick,
'with your writing, and your snuff, and your gossiping with the
servants, which no gentleman would do, and your nasty, sneaking,
Jaeger-felt boots, and your silly old tub of a wife. I knew that
smooth-spoken man of yours would believe anything against her, and I
knew he would never marry her after a set-out like this, and I knew
I should get her when she found I stuck to her through it all, as I
should have done, and as I would have done too, if she had taken
fifty diamond necklaces.'

'Send for the police,' said master, but nobody moved. For Mrs.
Oliver, who had been crying like a waterworks ever since we came
down into the library, said quite sudden, 'O Dick dear! let him go.
Don't prosecute him. See, he's lost everything, and he's lost her,
and he must have been mad with love for her or he wouldn't have done
such a thing.'

Now, wasn't that a true lady to speak up like that for him after
what he'd said of her? Mr. Oliver looked surprised at her speaking
up like that, her that hardly ever said a word except 'Yes, Dick
dear,' and 'No, Dick dear,' and then he shrugs his shoulders and he
says, 'You are right, my dear, he's punished enough.'

And John turned to go like a dog that has been whipped; but at the
door he faced round, and he said to Mrs. Oliver, 'You're a good
woman, and I'm sorry I said what I did about you. But for the other
I'm not sorry, not if it was my last word.'

And with that he went out of the room, and out of the house through
the front door. He had no relations and he had no friends, and I
suppose he had nowhere to go with his character gone, and so it
happened that was truly his last word as far as any on