Would I not? I’ve told you my score against Gordon-Cumming—a natural detestation of his supercilious vanity, his unconcealed dislike of me, above all the suspicion that he’d ploughed with my heifer, and now, if you please, the arrogant bastard was appointing me his message-boy. Throw into the scale his overweening certainty that he’d cleared himself, and must be grovelled to in consequence, and you’ll understand (if you know me at all) that I would not have missed the chance to sink the swine, not for my soul’s salvation.
For it was in my hands, no error. His coup de trois excuse had put the whole affair on a knife-edge. If it were shrewdly urged, the three wise men, and the witnesses, might be disposed, for the sake of avoiding a horrid scandal, to swallow it. Well, by the time I’d done with it, they’d spew it all over the floor.
So I consented to act as his go-between, and left him grinding his teeth at the prospect of accusers confounded and honour restored. No time, we agreed, must be lost, so I made for the Prince’s apartments, and whom should I meet on the way but the three leading witnesses, plainly just come from a royal audience: Master Wilson bright with excitement, Lycett Green tight-lipped, and young Levett plainly wishing himself in the Outer Hebrides. No change on that front, thinks I, and the air of gloom in H.R.H.’s sitting-room, most of it cigar smoke, confirmed my conclusion.
"That fellow is impossible!" Bertie was croaking, and I gathered he meant Lycett Green. "Not a shadow of doubt, according to him. Oh, it’s intolerable! What can we do but believe them?"
"As your highness says." Coventry sounded like a vicar at the graveside. "That being so, we are bound to take …" he frowned as he dredged his vocabulary "… ah, measures … in regard to Sir William."
"Lycett Green won’t keep quiet if we don’t," says Williams.
"Self-righteous ass!" snaps Bertie. "No, that’s not fair … he’s a decent man, no doubt—I only wish he weren’t so infernally adamant." He scowled at me. "Well?" I said I’d seen Gordon-Cumming.
"And much good that will have done! I’ve seen him myself—and it was heart-breaking! I tell you, the man almost had tears in his eyes! One of my closest friends, I’d ha' trusted him with my life—but how can I credit his denial in the face of … of …" He flourished a paw in the direction of the door. "They’re so sure! Even Levett, poor devil—heavens, we could hardly drag it out of him!" He sat down, groaning, drew on his cigar as though it were poisoned, and regarded me dyspeptically. "What did Cumming have to say to you?"
"Denied it, absolutely. I suppose he gave your highness his explanation?"
That brought him bolt upright. "What explanation?"
I hesitated, with an artistic frown, and shook my head. "I don’t know quite what to make of it myself … I confess that I …" At that I stopped, waiting for him to demand what the devil I was talking about, which he did, with considerable vigour.
"Well, sir… ." I began, half-apologetic, and then I gave him the coup de trois story, plain and matter-of-fact, but with dark doubt hovering over every word, and was gratified to see Coventry’s face growing long as a coffin, Williams frowning in disbelief, and the light of hope fading from Bertie’s bloodshot ogles.
"D’you believe it?" cries he, and I maintained the manly silence that damned Gordon-Cumming as no words could. "But is it possible?" he insisted.
"Possible, sir?" I made a lip and shrugged. "Aye, I dare say it’s … possible …"
"But even if it were true," broke in Williams, "and you plainly don’t think it is, it still does not explain all the … the irregularities. The pencil, that sort of thing." He met Bertie’s despairing eye. "I regret to say it, sir, but it sounds to me like the feeble excuse of a desperate man. And I’m sure," he added, "that that is how Green and the others will regard it."
Coventry heaved a draughty sigh. "Indeed, it only confirms my belief that Sir William … ah, that the witnesses … the charges …"
"That he’s a cheat and a liar!" cries Bertie. He growled down his temper, gnashed on his cigar, and faced us. "Very well, then. God knows we’ve done our best to sift the thing—and that’s our conclusion. He’s played foul and been caught out. Now," says he, and for the first time that night he sounded royal, "how is it to be hushed up?"
They stood mum, so I put in my oar again. "’Fraid it can’t be, sir … unless you and Williams are prepared to risk a court martial."
If I’d said "are prepared to steal the Crown Jewels and make a run for Paraguay" I couldn’t have provoked a finer display of consternation, but before Bertie could explode, I explained.
