"Was down in the country--jolly good trout district--when one night, while riding my favorite hobby, I happened to get on this almost-forgotten case of the 'Frisco Pet. Whereupon the landlord of the inn where I put up, informed me that one of the villagers in this identical little town had been landlady at the place where the affair occurred."
"The woman who testified no one had been to her place that night except--" John Steele spoke sharply.
"This fellow? Quite so." Captain Forsythe walked up and down. "Now, I'd always had a little theory. Could never get out of my mind one sentence this poor, ignorant fellow uttered at the trial. 'Seems as if I could remember a man's face, a stranger's, that looked into mine that night, your Lordship, but I ain't exactly cock-sure!' 'Ain't exactly cock-sure,'" repeated Captain Forsythe. "That's what caught me. Would a man, not telling the truth, be not quite 'cock-sure'; or would he testify to the face as a fact?" The other did not answer. "So the impression grew on me. Can you understand?"
"Hum! Very interesting, Forsythe; very ingenious; quite plausible!"
"Now you're laughing at me, Steele?"
"On the contrary, my dear fellow, go on."
"The landlady's testimony excluded the face, made it a figment of an imagination, disordered by drink!" Captain Forsythe waved his hand airily as he stepped back and forth.
"You went to see this woman?"
"Out of curiosity, and found she was, indeed, the same person. She seemed quite ill and feeble; I talked with her about an hour that day. Tried in every way to get her to remember she had possibly let in some other person that night, but--"
"But?"