The Law of the Green Man: Part Sixteen

The figure was female, but that was about all Lady Sylvia could make out. She wore a long cloak and hat, all of her face covered save for her eyes, which burned with a frightening fire. The woman laughed, pointing a wicked little derringer at Sir Harold Rait.

"I," she announced, "am the Angel of Death. I have the power to deal vengeance upon the Green Man, if he truly has overstepped the boundaries."

"You will not do justice!" Sir Harold laughed mockingly. "You are one of the Green Man's agents."

"There will be a trial," the Angel of Death spoke in chilling tones. "And if the Green Man is found guilty of having slain an innocent man without doing a proper investigation, then he will pay for it. Lady Sylvia, you will act as defence counsel for the Green Man. Leech, do you agree to act as Prosecutor?"

"Readily," the Leech laughed. "When I learned that that Green Man was on my tail, I decided to set up a man who I knew shared my name. I already knew the late Sir Harold, so I made sure to act on everything that came to me through him, using a paid agent to plant the incriminating papers in that safe. The clincher was when I invited the wife of one of my victims to Sir Harold's house, suspecting that the Green Man would take that as proof positive. And it worked!" the Leech laughed. "I used the Green Man as an assassin!"

"Then how could that destroy the Green Man?" Lady Sylvia flushed angrily. "You deliberately framed a man."

"But there was still doubt," Sir Harold laughed.

"The Way Sir Harold behaved towards me," Lady Sylvia bridled, "his reaction.... He didn't deny it."

"He couldn't," the Leech laughed. "Sir Harold was an unpleasant lech, who slept around. I told him exactly what to do, and that if he didn't follow my orders, then he would be destroyed, and that publicly. He could let the Green Man kill him, or have his reputation destroyed. Sir Harold had enough honour to choose the latter course."

Which, Lady Sylvia reflected, meant that what had happened there had been very, very bad. A man who had done many bad things had done something noble, and that meant that the Green Man had done something very ignoble.