! What a fool! To see
them wilfully trumping up a charge of murder against himself was--well,
it was enough to make any sane man lose hold on his reason. And
'Toinette! His little 'Toinette! If he should be convicted and sent to
prison, what would become of her? It would break her heart. And he might
never see her again! A sudden moisture pricked at the corners of his
eyes. God!--never to call her _wife_!... How long were those beasts going
to brood in there over the dead? And was there not a chance that the
bullet might be different? After all, wasn't it almost impossible that
the bullet _should_ be the same? His was an unusual little revolver made
by a firm in French Africa, having a different sort of cartridge. Every
Tom, Dick, and Harry didn't have one--couldn't afford it, in the first
place.... There was a chance--yes, certainly there was a _chance_.

... His blood began to hammer in his veins again, and his heart beat
rapidly. Hope went through him like wine, drowning all the fears and
terrors that had stalked before him like demons from another world. He
heard, with throbbing pulses, approaching footsteps in the hall. His head
was swimming, his feet seemed loaded with lead so that he could not rise.
Then, across the space from where Cleek stood, the revolver in one hand
and the tiny black object that had nested in a dead man's brain in the
other, came the sound of his voice, speaking in clear, concise sentences.
He could see the doctor's grave face over the curve of Mr. Narkom's fat
shoulder. For a moment the world swam. Then he caught the import of what
Cleek was saying.

"The bullet is the same as those in your revolver, Sir Nigel," he said,
concisely. "I am sorry, but I must do my duty. Constable Roberts, here is
your prisoner. I arrest this man for the murder of Dacre Wynne!"

CHAPTER XVII

IN THE CELL

What followed was like a sort of nightmare to Merriton. That he should be
arrested for the murder of Dacre Wynne reeled drunkenly in his brain.
Murderer! They were calling him a murderer! The liars! The fools! Calling
him a murderer, were they? And taking the word of a crawling worm like
Borkins, a man without honour and utterly devoid of decency, who could
stand up before them and tell them a story that was a tissue of lies. It
was appalling! What a fiend incarnate this man Cleek was! Coming here at
Nigel's own bidding, and then suddenly manipulating the evidence, until
it caught him up in its wr