"Is it a fact that on the night previous to his departure from Elveham,
some unpleasant incident occurred?"
"I know nothing of it. I have heard that the prisoner had some little
difference with his wife."
"Come, sir," demanded my counsel sharply, "did you not overhear a
conversation in the early morning?"
The witness appeared confused.
"Yes, I did," he admitted. "I heard my cousin ask him to wait a
stipulated period for an explanation."
"Have you any idea what this explanation is?"
"None."
"Then, after all, you are unable to throw any light whatever upon these
mysterious crimes?" he asked, in a strange harsh voice.
"I've told you all I know," replied Demetrius, a trifle paler than
before.
Mr Roland flung down his brief upon the table, slowly resumed his seat,
and pushed his wig from off his forehead with a perplexed gesture.
I could hardly realise my situation. What could it all possibly mean?
What was the object of this seaman giving evidence when he could throw
no light upon the matter, except that he actually saw me following the
murderer from Bedford Place?
He had taken a seat in the well of the Court with his face turned
towards me.
"Sergius Hertzen."
As the words rang through the place I started. I had not seen Vera's
uncle since our marriage, as he went to Zurich immediately afterwards.
There was a shuffling near the door, and the old man entered. As he
mounted the steps to the witness-box I noticed he had aged considerably.
"What are you, Mr Hartzen?" Mr Paget asked, referring to his brief at
the same moment.
"Police agent."
"And your nationality?"
"Russian."
The old man a police agent! Dumbfounded, I looked blankly around me.
"You are father of the previous witness?"
"I am."
"Now, what evidence can you give regarding the charge against the
prisoner?"
There was a dead and painful silence.
"We first met at the Hotel Isotta, Genoa, about a month after the murder
in Bedford Place. We frequently played _ecarte_ together, and on one
occasion he paid me a debt with the three five-pound notes I now
produce."
"And what is there peculiar about them?"
"I have since ascertained that their numbers correspond with those now
known to have been stolen from the house in Bedford Place."
The thought flashed across my mind that once, when I had lost to him, I
had discharged the debt with three notes. From whom I received them I
could not tell.
"What else do you know about the affair?" was the insinuating question
of the prosecuting counsel.
"Well; some three months after this I was present at the Central
Tribunal at St Petersburg, when prisoner was sentenced to the mines for
complicity in the murder of a hotel-keeper. The sentence, however, was
never carried out, for on the way to Siberia he escaped, returning to
England."
"It's a lie! I was exiled without trial," I shouted. Amid the loud
cries of "Silence," counsel turned to the judge, and with a cruel smile
about his lips remarked, "You see, my lord, prisoner admits he was
exiled."
Mr Roland made an impatient motion to me to preserve silence; so seeing
my protests were useless, I sank again into my chair, and tried to
conquer my fate by bearing it.
Mr Crane the junior counsel defending me, cross-examined him at some
length, but resumed his seat without being able to shake his testimony.
The waiter who had attended to me at the Charing Cross Hotel, and two of
my own servants were called, but their evidence was immaterial and
uninteresting.
I felt a strange morbid yielding to a superstitious feeling that I could
not shake off, and sat as one in a dream, until the Court rose and I was
sent back to my cell.