in this
letter that Juliet Sparling's relation to him had been absolutely
innocent, that he had persecuted her with his suit, and she had never
given him a friendly word, except out of fear. On the fatal evening he
had driven her out of her mind, he said, by his behavior in the garden;
she was not answerable for her actions; and his evidence at the trial
was merely dictated either by the desire to make his own case look less
black or by the fiendish wish to punish Juliet Sparling for her
loathing of him.

"But he confessed something else!--more important still. I must go back
a little. You will remember my version of the dagger incident? I
represented Mrs. Sparling as finding the dagger on the wall as she was
pushed or dragged up against the panelling by her antagonist--as it
were, under her hand. Wing swore at the trial that the dagger was not
there, and had never been there. The house belonged to an old traveller
and sportsman who had brought home arms of different sorts from all
parts of the world. The house was full of them. There were two
collections of them on the wall of the dining-room, one in the hall, and
one or two in the gallery. Wing declared that the dagger used was taken
by Juliet Sparling from the hall trophy, and must have been carried
up-stairs with a deliberate purpose of murder. According to him, their
quarrel in the garden had been a quarrel about money matters, and Mrs.
Sparling had left him, in great excitement, convinced that the chief
obstacle in the way of her complete control of Wing and his money lay in
the wife. There again--as to the weapon--I had no means of refuting him.
As far as the appearance--after the murder--of the racks holding the
arms was concerned, the weapon might have been taken from either place.
And again--on the whole--the jury believed Wing. The robbery of the
sister's money--the incredible rapidity of Juliet Sparling's
deterioration--had set them against her. Her wild beauty, her proud and
dumb misery in the dock, were of a kind rather to alienate the plain man
than to move him. They believed her capable of anything--and it was
natural enough.

"But Wing confessed to me that he knew perfectly well that the dagger
belonged to the stand in the gallery. He had often examined the arms
there, and was quite certain of the fact. He swore this to the priest.
Here, again, you can only explain his evidence by a desire for revenge."

Sir James paused. As he moved a little away fr