"Well," he said, at last, "what is your defence?"
Gabriel sat up on the bed and rapped the bowl of his pipe against the bedpost to loosen some refractory encrustation.
"Wot," he asked, gravely, "would be your idee of a good defence? Axin ye ez a lawyer having experin's in them things, and reck'nin' to pay ez high ez eny man fo' the same, wot would you call a good defence?" And he gravely laid himself down again in an attitude of respectful attention.
"We hope to prove," said Maxwell, really smiling, "that when you left your house and came to my office the murdered man was alive and at his hotel; that he went over to the hill long before you did; that you did not return until the evening—after the murder was committed, as the 'secret' mentioned in your wife's mysterious note evidently shows. That for some reason or other it was her design to place you in a suspicious attitude. That the note shows that she refers to some fact of which she was cognisant and not yourself."
"Suthin' that she knowed, and I didn't get to hear," translated Gabriel, quietly.
"Exactly! Now you see the importance of that note."
Gabriel did not immediately reply, but slowly lifted his huge frame from the bed, walked to the open window, still holding the paper in his hands, deliberately tore it into the minutest shreds before the lawyer could interfere, and then threw it from the window.
"Thet paper don't 'mount ter beans, no how!" he said, quietly but explanatively as he returned to the bed.
It was Lawyer Maxwell's turn to become dumb. In his astonished abstraction he forgot to wipe his mouth, and gazed at Gabriel with his nervous smile as if his client had just perpetrated a practical joke of the first magnitude.
"Ef it's the same to you, I'll just gin ye me idee of a de-fence," said Gabriel, apologetically, relighting his pipe, "allowin' o' course that you knows best, and askin' no deduckshun from your charges for advice. Well, you jess stands up afore the jedge, and you slings 'em a yarn suthin' like this: 'Yer's me, for instans,' you sez, sez you, 'ez gambols—gambols very deep—jess fights the tiger, wharever and whenever found, the same bein' onbeknownst ter folks gin'rally, and spechil te my wife, ez was July. Yer's me been gambolin' desprit with this yer man, Victyor Ramyirez, and gets lifted bad! and we hez, so to speak, a differculty about some pints in the game. I allows one thing, he allows another, and this yer man gives me the lie and I stabs him!' Stop—hole your hosses!" interjected Gabriel, suddenly, "thet looks bad, don't it? he bein' a small man, a little feller 'bout your size. No! Well, this yer's the way we puts it up: 'Seving men—seving—friends o' his, comes at me, permiskis like, one down, and nex' comes on, and we hez it mighty lively thar fur an hour, until me, bein' in a tight place, hez to use a knife and cuts this yer man bad!' Thar, that's 'bout the thing! Now ez to my runnin' away, you sez, sez you, ez how I disremembers owin' to the 'citement that I hez a 'pintent in Sacramento the very nex' day, and waltzes down yer to keep it, in a hurry. Ef they want to know whar July ez, you sez she gits wild on my not comin' home, and starts that very night arter me. Thar, thet's 'bout my idee—puttin' it o' course in your own shape, and slingin' in them bits o' po'try and garbage, and kinder sassin' the plaintiff's counsel, ez you know goes down afore a jedge and jury."