UNEXPECTED EVIDENCE.
When Sir Gilbert Gildersleeve left Spa, he left with a ruddy glow
of recovered health on his bronzed red cheek; for in spite of anxiety
and repentance and doubt, the man's iron frame would somehow still
assert itself. When he took his seat on the bench in court that
morning, he looked so haggard and ill with fatigue and remorse
that even Elma Clifford herself pitied him. A hushed whisper ran
round among the spectators below that the judge wasn't fit to try
the case before him. And indeed he wasn't. For it was his own trial,
not Guy Waring's, he was really presiding over.
He sat down in his place, a ghastly picture of pallid despair. The
red colour had faded altogether from his wan, white cheeks. His eyes
were dreamy and bloodshot with long vigil. His big hands trembled
like a woman's as he opened his note-book. His mouth twitched
nervously. So utter a collapse, in such a man as he was, seemed
nothing short of pitiable to every spectator.
Counsel for the Crown stared him steadily in the face. Counsel for
the Crown--Forbes-Ewing, Q.C.--was an old forensic enemy, who had
fought many a hard battle against Gildersleeve, with scant interchange
of courtesy, when both were members of the junior Bar together; but
now Sir Gilbert's look moved even HIM to pity. "I think, my lord,"
the Q.C. suggested with a sympathetic simper, "your lordship's too
ill to open the court to-day. Perhaps the proceedings had better
be adjourned for the present."
"No, no," the judge answered, almost testily, shaking his sleeve
with impatience. "I'll have no putting off for trifles in the court
where I sit. There's a capital case to come on this morning. When
a man's neck's at stake--when a matter of life and death's at issue--I
don't like to keep any one longer in suspense than I absolutely
need. Delay would be cruel."
As he spoke he lifted his eyes--and caught Elma Clifford's. The
judge let his own drop again in speechless agony. Elma's never
flinched. Neither gave a sign; but Elma knew, as, well as Sir
Gilbert knew himself, it was his own life and death the judge was
thinking of, and not Guy Waring's.
"As you will, my lord," counsel for the Crown responded demurely.
"It was your lordship's convenience we all had at heart, rather
than the prisoner's."
"Eh! What's that?" the judge said sharply, with a suspicious frown.
Then he recovered himself with a start. For a moment he had half
fancied that fellow, Forbes-Ewing, meant SOMETHING by what he
said--meant to poke innuendoes at him. But, after all, it was a
mere polite form. How frightened we all are, to be sure, when we
know we're on our trial!
The opening formalities were soon got over, and then, amid a
deep hush of breathless lips, Guy Waring, of Staple Inn, Holborn,
gentleman, was put upon his trial for the wilful murder of Montague
Nevitt, eighteen months before, at Mambury in Devon.
Guy, standing in the dock, looked puzzled and distracted rather
than alarmed or terrified. His cheek was pale, to be sure, and his
eyes were weary; but as Elma glanced from him hastily to the judge
on the bench she had no hesitation in settling in her own mind
which of the two looked most at that moment like a detected murderer
before the faces of his accusers. Guy was calm and self-contained.
Sir Gilbert's mute agony was terrible to behold. Yet, strange to
say, no one else in court save Elma seemed to note it as she did.
People saw the judge was ill, but that was all. Perhaps his wig
and robes helped to hide the effect of conscious guilt--nobody
suspects a judge of murder; perhaps all eyes were more intent on
the prisoner.
Be that as it might, counsel for the Crown opened with a statement
of what they meant to prove, set forth in the familiar forensic
fashion. They didn't pretend the evidence against the accused
was absolutely conclusive or overwhelming in character. It was
inferential only, but not circumstantial--inferential in such a
cumulative and convincing way as could leave no moral doubt on any
intelligent mind as to the guilt of the prisoner. They would show
that a close intimacy had long existed between the prisoner Waring
and the deceased gentleman, Mr. Montague Nevitt. Witnesses would
be called who would prove to the court that just before the murder
this intimacy, owing to circumstances which could not fully be
cleared up, had passed suddenly into intense enmity and open hatred.
The landlord of the inn at Mambury, and other persons to be called,
would speak to the fact that prisoner had followed his victim in hot
blood into Devonshire, and had tracked him to the retreat where he
was passing his holiday alone and incognito--had tracked him with
every expression of indignant anger, and had uttered plain threats
of personal violence towards him.
Nor was that all. It would be shown that on the afternoon of
Waring's visit to Mambury, Mr. Nevitt, who possessed an intense
love of nature in her wildest and most romantic moods--it's always
counsel's cue, for the prosecution, to set the victim's character
in the most amiable light, and so win the sympathy of the jury
as against the accused--Mr. Nevitt, that close student of natural
beauty, had strolled by himself down a certain woodland path,
known as The Tangle, which led through the loneliest and leafiest
quarter of Mambury Chase, along the tumbling stream described as
the Mam-water. Ten minutes after he had passed the gate, a material
witness would show them, the prisoner Waring presented himself, and
pointedly asked whether his victim had already gone down the path
before him. He was told that that was so. Thereupon the prisoner
opened the gate, and followed excitedly. What happened next no
living eye but the prisoner's ever saw. Montague Nevitt was not
destined to issue from that wood alive. Two days later his breathless
body was found, all stiff and stark, hidden among the brown bracken
at the bottom of the dell, where the murderer no doubt had thrust it
away out of his sight on that fatal afternoon in fear and trembling.
Half-way through the opening speech Sir Gilbert's heart beat fast
and hard. He had never heard Forbes-Ewing open a case so well.
The man would be hanged! He felt sure of it! He could see it! For
a while the judge almost gloated over that prospect of release.
What was Guy's life to him now, by the side of his wife's and
Gwendoline's happiness? But as counsel uttered the words, "What
happened next no living eye but the prisoner's ever saw," he looked
hard at Guy. Not a quiver of remorse or of guilty knowledge passed
over the young man's face. But Elma Clifford, for her part, looked
at the judge on the bench. Their eyes met once more. Again Sir
Gilbert's fell. Oh, heavens! how terrible! Even for Gwendoline's
sake he could never stand this appalling suspense. But perhaps after
all the prosecution might fail. There was still a chance left that
the jury might acquit him.
So, torn by conflicting emotions, he sat there still, stiff and
motionless in his seat as an Egyptian statue.
Then counsel went on to deal in greater detail with the question of
motive. There were two motives the prosecution proposed to allege:
first, the known enmity of recent date between the two parties, believed
to have reference to some business dispute; and, secondly--here
counsel dropped his voice to a very low key--he was sorry to suggest
it; but the evidence bore it out--mere vulgar love of gain--the
commonplace thirst after filthy lucre. They would bring witnesses
to show that when Mr. Montague Nevitt was last seen alive, he was
in possession of a pocket-book containing a very large large sum in
Bank of England notes of high value; from the moment of his death
that pocket-book had disappeared, and nobody knew what had since
become of it. It was not upon the body when the body was found. And
all their efforts to trace the missing notes, whose numbers were
not known, had been unhappily unsuccessful.
Guy listened to all this impeachment in a dazed, dreamy way. He
hardly knew what it meant. It appalled and chilled him. The web of
circumstances was too thick for him to break. He couldn't understand
it himself. And what was far worse, he could give no active
assistance to his own lawyers on the question of the notes--which
might be very important evidence against him--without further
prejudicing his case by confessing the forgery. At all hazards, he
was determined to keep that quiet now. Cyril had never spoken to
a soul of that episode, and to speak of it, as things stood, would
have been certain death to him. I would be to supply the one missing
link of motive which the prosecution needed to complete their chain
of cumulative evidence.
It was some comfort to him to think, however, that the secret was
safe in Cyril's keeping. Cyril had all the remaining notes, still
unchanged, in his possession; and the prosecution, knowing nothing
of the forgery, or its sequel, had no clue at all as to where they
came from.
But as for Sir Gilbert, he listened still with ever-deepening
horror. His mind swayed to and fro between hope and remorse. They
were making the man guilty, and Gwendoline would be saved! They
were making the man guilty, and a gross wrong would be perpetrated!
Great drops of sweat stood colder than ever on his burning brow.
He couldn't have believed Forbes-Ewing could have done it so well.
He was weaving a close web round an innocent man with consummate
forensic skill and cunning.
The case went on to its second stage. Witnesses were called, and Guy
listened to them dreamily. All of them bore out counsel's opening
statement. Every man in court felt the evidence was going very
hard against the prisoner. They'd caught the right man, that was
clear--so the spectators opined. They'd proved it to the hilt. This
fellow would swing for it.
At last the landlord of the Talbot Arms at Mambury shuffled slowly
into the witness-box. He was a heavy, dull man, and he gave evidence
as to Nevitt's stay under an assumed name--which counsel explained
suggestively by the deceased gentleman's profound love of
retirement--and as to Guy's angry remarks and evident indignation.
But the most sensational part of all his evidence was that which
related to the pocket-book Montague Nevitt was carrying at the time
of his death, containing notes, he should say, for several
hundred-pounds, "or it murt be thousands--and yet, again, it mustn't,"
which had totally disappeared since the day of the murder. Diligent
search had been made for the pocket-book everywhere by the landlord
and the police, but it had vanished into space, "leaving not a wrack
behind," as junior counsel for the prosecution poetically phrased
it.
At the words Cyril mechanically dived his hand into his pocket, as
he had done a hundred times a day before, during these last eighteen
months, to assure himself that that most incriminating and unwelcome
object was still safely ensconced in its usual resting-place. Yes,
there it was sure enough, as snug as ever! He sighed, and pulled
his hand out again nervously, with a little jerk. Something came
with it, that fell on the floor with a jingle by his neighbour's
feet. Cyril turned crimson, then deadly pale. He snatched at the
object; but his neighbour picked it up and examined it cursorily.
Its flap had burst open with the force of the fall, and on the
inside the finder read with astonishment, in very plain letters,
the very name of the murdered man, "Montague Nevitt."
Cyril held out his hand to recover it impatiently. But the finder
was too much taken back at his strange discovery to part with it
so readily. It was full of money-Bank of England notes; and through
the transparent paper of the outermost among them the finder could
dimly read the words, "One hundred."
He rose in his place, and held the pocket-book aloft in his hand
with a triumphant gesture. Cyril tried in vain to clutch at it. The
witness turned round sharply, disturbed by this incident. "What's
that?" the judge exclaimed, puckering his brows in disapprobation,
and looking angrily towards the disturber.
"If you please, my lord," the innkeeper answered, letting his jaw
drop slowly in almost speechless amazement, "that's the thing I
was a-talking of: that's Mr. Nevitt's pocket-book."
"Hand it up," the judge said shortly, gazing hard with all his eyes
at the mute evidence so tendered.
The finder handed it up without note or comment.
Sir Gilbert turned the book over in blank surprise. He was dumfoundered
himself. For a minute or two he examined it carefully, inside and
out. Yes; there was no mistake. It was really what they called it.
"Montague Nevitt" was written in plain letters on the leather flap;
within lay half-a-dozen engraved visiting-cards, a Foreign Office
passport in Nevitt's name, and thirty Bank of England notes for
one hundred pounds apiece. This was, indeed, a mystery!
"Where did it come from?" the judge asked, drawing a painfully
deep breath, and handing it across to the jury.
And the finder answered, "If you please, my lord, the gentleman
next to me pulled it out of his pocket."
"Who is he?" the judge inquired, with a sinking heart, for he
himself knew perfectly well who was the unhappy possessor.
And a thrill of horror ran round the crowded court as Forbes-Ewing
answered, in a very distinct voice, "Mr. Cyril Waring, my lord,
the brother of the prisoner."