The pea-green young man, stepping briskly up, gazed about him, open-mouthed, with a vacant stare. The look of cunning on his face was carefully suppressed. He wore, on the contrary, an air of injured innocence combined with an eye-glass.
'You did not put this will in the drawer where Mr. Tillington found it, did you?' counsel asked.
The pea-green young man laughed. 'No, I certainly didn't put it theah. My cousin Harold was man in possession. He took jolly good care I didn't come neah the premises.'
'Do you think you could forge a will if you tried?'
Lord Southminster laughed. 'No, I don't,' he answered, with a well-assumed naïveté. 'That's just the difference between us, don't yah know. I'm what they call a fool, and my cousin Harold's a precious clevah fellah.'
There was another loud laugh.
'That's not evidence,' the judge observed, severely.
It was not. But it told far more than much that was. It told strongly against Harold.
'Besides,' Lord Southminster continued, with engaging frankness, 'if I forged a will at all, I'd take jolly good care to forge it in my own favah.'
My turn came next. Our counsel handed me the incriminated will. 'Did you draw up this document?' he asked.