'We do not need your aid,' I answered. 'We have found the will,
ourselves. Thanks to Lady Georgina, it is safe till this minute.'

'And to me,' he put in, cringing, and trying after his kind, to curry
favour with the winners at the last moment. 'It's all _my_ doing, my
lady! I wouldn't destroy it. His lordship offered me a hundred pounds
more to break open the back of the desk at night, while your ladyship
was asleep, and burn the thing quietly. But I told him he might do his
own dirty work if he wanted it done. It wasn't good enough while your
ladyship was here in possession. Besides, I wanted the right will
preserved, for I thought things might turn up so; and I wouldn't stand
by and see a gentleman like Mr. Tillington, as has always behaved well
to me, deprived of his inheritance.'

'Which is why you conspired with Lord Southminster to rob him of it, and
to send him to prison for Higginson's crime,' I interposed calmly.

'Then you confess you put the forged will there?' Mr. Hayes said,
getting to business.

White looked about him helplessly. He missed his headpiece, the
instigator of the plot. 'Well, it was like this, my lady,' he began,
turning to Lady Georgina, and wriggling to gain time. 'You see, his
lordship and Mr. Higginson----' he twirled his thumbs and tried to
invent something plausible.

Lady Georgina swooped. 'No rigmarole!' she said, sharply. 'Do you
confess you put it there or do you not--reptile?' Her vehemence startled
him.

'Yes, I confess I put it there,' he said at last, blinking. 'As soon as
the breath was out of Mr. Ashurst's body I put it there.' He began to
whimper. 'I'm a poor man with a wife and family, sir,' he went on,
'though in Mr. Ashurst's time I always kep' that quiet; and his lordship
offered to pay me well for the job; and when you're paid well for a job
yourself, sir----'

Mr. Hayes waved him off with one imperious hand. 'Sit down in the corner
there, man, and don't move or utter another word,' he said, sternly,
'until I order you. You will be in time still for me to produce at Bow
Street.'

Just at that moment, Lord Southminster swaggered back, accompanied by a
couple of unwilling policemen. 'Oh, I say,' he cried, bursting in and
staring around him, jubilant. 'Look heah, Georgey, _are_ you going
quietly, or must I ask these coppahs to evict you?' He was wreathed in
smiles now, and had evidently been fortifying himself with brandies and
soda.

Lady Georgina rose in her