For a few moments they sat silent, then he burst out: "Yet, by hook or by crook, an adjournment we must get. Even in a week much could be done. We could find ways and means to throw discredit on the prosecution's witnesses. We could create a belief that Georgina went in terror of her husband, even if we have to bribe fresh witnesses of our own to say so. We could engage new Counsel to present the defence from a different angle. But all these things need time—time— time!"
" 'Tis the same thought that has haunted me these past three weeks," sighed the Colonel. "Yet, had I had longer, I know not what more I could have done; or even now if these measures you propose would prove effective. They sound so simple, but I fear you would find them far from easy of accomplishment."
Roger suddenly snapped his fingers. "I have it! I will go to the Prime Minister. As the King's first representative he must surely have the power to order the adjournment of a trial for a week."
Colonel Thursby did not seek to dissuade him. His own belief was, that although the Royal prerogative enabled the King to pardon a convicted person, if he wished, not even he had the right to stay the course of British justice once it was set in motion. Yet the Colonel, worn out as he was himself, could still sympathise with Roger's terrible urge to take some form of action, and thought it better that he should set out on a futile errand than remain inactive at the mercy of his heartrending thoughts.
Grabbing his hat and cloak, Roger promised that he would come back as soon as he could, and ran downstairs. As there was no hackney coach in sight, he dashed round to the mews at the back of the house, shouted for his old friend Tomkins, the Colonel's coachman, and told him to harness a pair of horses to a carriage. By half-past six he was back in Downing Street.
His luck was in to the extent that the Prime Minister had just finished dinner and was about to go across to the House, so consented to give him a few minutes before leaving, but there it ended. Pitt was gentle but adamant.
He said that if Roger was dissatisfied with the course that the case had taken, that alone, as a member of the public, gave him no right whatever to intervene. If he had private knowledge of the circumstances in which Sir Humphrey Etheredge had met his death, then it was his duty to disclose it. As far as he, the Prime Minister was concerned, even with the best will in the world, he could not instruct a judge to adjourn a case upon which he was already sitting. The only means by which an adjournment could be secured was by an application to submit fresh evidence before the judge ordered the jury to find a verdict.
"Fresh evidence!" "Time!" "Fresh evidence!" "Time!"were the words that hammered like the loud ticking of a clock in Roger's overwrought brain. How, without worsening Georgina's desperate position, by making it public that she had had a lover with her in her bedroom who had helped to bring about her husband's death, could he produce the one and secure the other?
Suddenly he saw that there was only one person in the world who, if he chose, could stave off the apparent inevitability of the judge donning the black cap and pronouncing the death sentence on Georgina the foDowing morning. It was Vorontzoff. His enemy had been the first to arrive in the room and find Georgina kneeling by her dead husband's body. If he could be cajoled, bribed or bullied into retracting the evidence he had already given, and making a fresh statement, the situation might yet be saved.
For a further ten minutes Roger talked to Pitt, asking his advice on the legal aspects of certain courses which might be pursued. With some reluctance Pitt agreed that one of them was worth attempting; then he added:
"To approve what you have in mind is not consonant with my status as a barrister-at-law, and even less so with my functions as a Minister of the Crown. Yet, from what you tell me, I realise that you are driven to this extremity out of an attachment which combines the highest feelings of a brother, friend and lover. In such a case I cannot find it in myself to put a restraint upon you. Officially, I must know nothing of this matter, but as a friend I hope that you will succeed in your unorthodox endeavour to unveil the truth and establish Lady Etheredge's innocence."
*****
Side by side they went downstairs to their respective carriages. Britain's great Prime Minister, sitting stiff-necked and unbending, as usual, drove the short distance to the House of Commons; while Roger directed Colonel Thursby's coachman to Amesbury House.
For the past three hours he had not given a single thought to Natalia Andreovna. Now, as he walked up the steps of the mansion it struck him that on this, their first night in England, he would have once more to plead urgent business as an excuse for leaving her. But he was not called upon to do so.
On entering the drawing-room, where several members of the family and their friends staying in the house were assembled round a dish of after-dinner tea, the old Marquess told him that when they had finished dinner, as he had not returned, Natalia had expressed a wish to take a drive round Piccadilly and the Parks to see them for the first time in the evening light. She had excused herself from accepting an offer that one of them should accompany her, on the plea that Roger would be disappointed if, during her first outing in London, anyone but himself showed her the sights. So, in order to indulge this whimsy of his foreign guest, the Marquess had sent for his second coachman, who spoke a little French, and told him to take her for an hour's drive round the town.
Roger's mind was too occupied with Georgina to give the matter anything but the scantiest thought. He inquired if Droopy Ned was at home and, on learning that he had not yet come in, excused himself and hurried up to his room.
There, he collected one of his pistols, loaded it, thrust it into the inner pocket of his coat, and, running down to the courtyard, told old Tomkins to drive him to Woronzow House in St. John's Wood.
It was now close on a quarter to eight and an unusually warm evening for early spring, but dusk was already obscuring the vistas as he drove up the splendid new thoroughfare of Portland Place and out into the country. For the best part of a mile the way lay through farm lands, then they turned off the Hampstead Road and entered the shadows of a woodland glade.
During the drive Roger had had time to think out his plan of campaign. He felt certain that if he drove up to the front door of the Embassy, and sent in his name, Vorontzoff would refuse to see him alone, from fear that he meditated an assault. The proposition that he meant to put to the Ambassador was not, as he had led Pitt to suppose, that he should reveal certain facts that he had so far suppressed out of malice, but that he should go into court next morning and tell a lie to save Georgina's life.
Roger had argued to himself that Vorontzoff was as much responsible for Sir Humphrey Etheredge's death as either he or Georgina, in fact, more so; for had the Russian not sent his midnight messenger to Goodwood it would never have occurred. Therefore he must be persuaded that in common decency it was for him to avert the penalty from falling on another. If entreaties, and appeals to any sense of chivalry he might have, were not enough, Roger meant to threaten him and, as he had disclosed to Pitt, in the last extremity, force him to sign a statement at the point of a pistol.
But any such conversation could not possibly be held in the presence of witnesses; and Roger did not wish his visit to the house to be known even to the Embassy servants, if it could possibly be avoided. So when the carriage drew level with the end of the Embassy garden, he told Tomkins to pull up, and wait there until his return.
Leaving the road he walked round the corner of a wall that enclosed the garden from the wood, and along it for some twenty paces until he came to a wrought-iron gate. He had thought that he would have to climb the wall, but he was saved the trouble, as the gate proved to be unlocked. Having peered through it to make certain that no one was about, he slipped inside.