The judge was understood to say that he objected to nothing calculated to further the ends of justice. The fashionable audience thrilled. Society settled down to the knowledge that it was going to have a new sensation. Ladies ceased the rustling of their fans, and the whispering and giggling stopped, for here was a drama far more realistic and terrible than anything ever seen upon the stage. A man's future literally hung upon the fair white cloth suspended from the wall at the end of the court.
The lights went out one by one, until there was nothing left but the pallid flame of the lantern lamp, which faintly picked out the eager eyes and parted lips of the excited spectators. Then the lamp vanished, and almost immediately a brilliant disc of light was thrown on the white sheet. In the long lane of flame the little motes of dust and fluff danced and flickered. Here and there, as a hand or an arm went up from those at the back of the lantern, ghostly accusing shadows seemed to flit. Out of the darkness the voice of the Crown Counsel came with a startling suddenness.
"In the first instance," he said, "we propose to throw on the screen the magnified photograph of certain finger impressions taken from the Cellini plate. These photographs were made at Scotland Yard, and developed by the expert who is now assisting us in this matter. Here, my lord, and gentlemen of the jury, is the first of the magnified photographs."
The great white shining disc disappeared as if by magic for a moment, and then upon it there stood out a wonderful reproduction of the right and left palms and finger tips of a human hand. Magnified so largely, every line and scar and little filament could be seen. It was as if some painstaking engraver had worked up the whole thing under a powerful microscope.
"There we have the impression of the prisoner's hands as taken from the Cellini plate," the lawyer went on. "If we are wrong, it is for the prisoner to prove it. But to make matters absolutely certain, the next plate will show the same finger prints as taken from the crystal ball. We know from the highest authority that the crystal ball was last in the hands of the prisoner."
The photograph vanished, the great white disc shone out again, and once more it was obscured by an almost precisely similar photograph. It would have been an expert, indeed, who could have found out any dissimilarity between the two pictures.
"And now, to make matters doubly sure," the lawyer said, "we propose to reproduce the two photographs superimposed one on the top of the other."
Another exciting moment followed, a pause of almost painful interest; and then the two slides were placed in the lantern at once. They stood out on the sheet, just a shade misty and indistinct, like a badly printed picture; but the veriest novice there could see at once for himself that they were the same hands. As suddenly as it had vanished the lights flashed up again, and every eye was turned upon Anstruther's white and rigid face.
"My lord," he said, in a hoarse, strained voice, "with yourermission, I should like it adjourned until to-morrow."