“Now, will you kindly tell us how it is that when I show you a life-size photograph, standing within one-third of the distance at which you have testified you saw the defendant on the deck of the steamship, in a room which you admit is more than three times better lighted than that deck, under conditions, therefore, which are far more favorable than those which existed at that time, you are unable to distinguish between a life-size photograph of Mr. Scudder and a photograph of Mr. Moar?”
The witness said, “If you will kindly return my glasses, Mr. Mason.”
Mason said, “In other words, Miss Fell, without your glasses you can’t identify faces at this distance, can you?”
“I can identify figures.”
“Exactly,” Mason said, “by the way they are dressed. Is that it?”
“Well, that’s partially it.”
“In other words,” Mason went on, “while Mr. and Mrs. Moar passed closely enough to you when you were standing on the lower deck so you could recognize them, by the time you had gamed the boat deck, you were not close enough to them to recognize their faces. You could see figures. You only knew that there was the figure of a man in a tuxedo and a woman in a dark formal gown. Is that right?”
“That’s all I needed to know under the circumstances,” she said.
“But that’s right, isn’t it?”
“I could identify those figures, Mr. Mason. I know the woman was Mrs. Moar. It couldn’t have been anyone else.”