"Without occupying your attention by going into details, my lord, I may briefly say that a close watch was set on Mr. Simcoe, and it was found that he was exceedingly intimate with a man of whom no one seemed to know anything; and before I go further I will ask, my lord, that you will give orders that Mr. Simcoe shall not leave the court until I have finished."
"You are not asking without strong reason, I trust, brother Herbert?"
"Certainly not, my lord."
The order was, therefore, given. Simcoe grew very white in the face, but otherwise maintained an air of stolid indifference.
"I will now go back for a moment, my lord. General Mathieson was attended by three of the leading physicians in London at the time of his seizure. The symptoms were so peculiar that in all their experience they had not met a similar case. Dr. Leeds, however, differed from them, but being their junior could not press his opinion; but he told them that his opinion was that the fit was due to the administration of some drug unknown to the British Pharmacopœia, as the effects were precisely similar to those in cases that he had read of in Africa and among other savage people, where a poison of this kind was used by the native fetich men or wizards. That opinion was confirmed rather than diminished by the subsequent progress of the malady and the final death of his patient. The one man who could benefit by the General's death was sitting next to him at dinner at the time of his seizure, and that man, according to his own statement, had been for many years knocking about among the savages of the South Sea Islands and the islands of the Malay Archipelago.
"I do not accuse John Simcoe of this crime, but I need hardly say that the mere possibility of such a thing heightened the strong feeling entertained by Miss Covington that Simcoe was the author of the abduction of Walter Rivington. She and her devoted friend, Miss Purcell, pursued their investigations with unflagging energy. They suspected that the man who was very intimate with Simcoe had acted as his agent in the matter, and a casual remark which was overheard in a singular manner, which will be explained when the case goes into another court, that this man was going to Tilbury, gave them a clew. Then, in a manner which many persons might find it very hard to believe, Miss Covington learned from a conversation between the two men, when together in a box at Her Majesty's Theater, that the lad was in charge of a bargeman living near the little village of Pitsea, in Essex. From that place, my lord, he was brought last week, and Miss Covington will produce him in court, if your lordship wishes to see him. Thus, then, it is immaterial to us whether your lordship pronounces for the first or second will.
"But, my lord, I have not finished my story. Under neither of the wills does that man take a farthing. The money was left to John Simcoe; and John Simcoe was drowned over twenty years ago. The man standing over there is one William Sanderson, a sergeant on the paymaster's staff at Benares when the real John Simcoe was there. There happened to be a resemblance between this man and him, so strong that it was generally remarked upon by his comrades. This man Sanderson deserted soon after Simcoe was drowned, taking with him three hundred pounds of the paymaster's money. There was a sharp hue and cry after him, but he managed to make his escape. All this is a certainty, but we may assume without much difficulty that the man changed his name as soon as he got to Calcutta, and nothing was more likely than that he should take the name of John Simcoe, whom he had been told that he so strongly resembled.
"For twenty years we hear nothing further of William Sanderson, nor do we hear when he returned to London. Probably he, in some way or other, came across the name of General Mathieson, and remembering what John Simcoe had done for the General, he, on the strength of his personal likeness, and the fact that he had, for twenty years, gone by that name, determined to introduce himself to him, with the result you know. He was clever enough to know that he must answer questions as to his history before he left England, and it was desirable to obtain witnesses who would, if necessary, certify to him. But he knew nothing of Simcoe's birthplace or history; so he inserted advertisements in a great number of London and provincial newspapers, saying that the relations of the John Simcoe who was supposed to have been drowned in the Bay of Bengal in the year 1832 would hear of something to their advantage at the address given. A maiden aunt, living at Stowmarket, did reply. He went down there at once, rushed into her arms and called her aunt, and told her that it was his intention to make her comfortable for life by allowing her fifty pounds per annum. He stayed with her for three days, and during that time obtained from her gossip full details of his boyhood and youth, his friends and their occupation, and he then went out and called upon John Simcoe's old companions, all of whom took him on his own word and his knowledge of the past and his recognition by his aunt.
"So things might have remained. This man, after undergoing what punishment might be awarded to him for his abduction of Walter Rivington, could have claimed the ten thousand pounds left him by General Mathieson, had it not been that, by what I cannot but consider a dispensation of Providence, an old comrade of his, Staff-Sergeant Nichol, was attracted to the hall this morning by seeing the name of Simcoe and that of General Mathieson coupled in the cause list. This man was in the hall talking to his professional advisers, and Nichol, walking close to him, to see if he could recognize the man whom he had last seen carried wounded into Benares, at once recognized in the supposed John Simcoe the deserter and thief, Sergeant Sanderson. He passed him two or three times, to assure himself that he was not mistaken. Happily the deserter had a mark that was ineffaceable; he had, as a recruit, let off his rifle, and the ball had passed through the fleshy part of the forearm, leaving there, as Sergeant Nichol has informed me, an ineffaceable scar, blackened by powder. If this man is not Sergeant Sanderson, and is the long-lost John Simcoe, he has but to pull up the sleeve of his left arm and show that it is without scar."
The man did not move; he was half stunned by the sudden and terrible exposure of the whole of his plans. As he did not rise the counsel said: