“No. Nothing,” he answered, and the judge drew on the black cap.
“But I have. I have everything to say.”
The voice rang out upon the dead silence, full, clear and feminine. From the back of the hall it came. Every head went round in that direction as though turned with the same wire.
“Let that woman be removed instantly,” said the judge, whose experience was not devoid of similar cases of interruption on the part of some hysterically disposed female, worked up to exaltation pitch.
“You cannot remove me until you have heard me,” went on the voice, calm, firm, and without a quaver; its owner doubtless strengthened by the certainty that in the densely-packed crowd it would be impossible for the Court officers to reach her before she had said her say. “My lord, you cannot condemn this man for the murder of Hubert Dorrien, since Hubert Dorrien is alive and well at this moment. I saw him and talked with him as lately as this very morning. Then I hurried on here, and, thank God, I am in time.”
A thrill of indescribable emotion went up from that wrought-up audience, a gasp—that took the form of a deeply-breathed—
“Oh-h!”
“Let her come forward,” said the judge, his mind by no means free from suspicion that this was a carefully planned theatrical coup.
Way was made for a tall female figure, which, advancing from the back of the room, was ushered forward, and for the sake of convenience was marshalled into the witness-box, though not sworn. And the light of the candles, clearer here in the vicinity of the Bench and Bar, revealed an exceedingly attractive face, a face, moreover, well known to many there, but to none better than the prisoner awaiting sentence of death. For it was the face of Lizzie Devine.
“Hubert Dorrien is alive, my lord,” she began, without waiting to be interrogated, “alive and well. He is at the Duke of Cornwall Hotel, at Plymouth, with a broken leg.”