“My honourable friend’s question,” said Reggie, “should be addressed to Mynheer Witt or Mynheer Gerard. You know, this is like Alice in Wonderland. Sentence first, trial afterwards. Why didn’t you look into the case before you tried it? Then you could have asked Witt and Gerard these little questions when you had them in the box. And very interesting too.”
“We can’t ask them now, at any rate. They’ve vanished. Witt left his flat on the day of the trial. Gerard left his hotel the same night. Both said they were going back to Amsterdam. And here’s the Dutch police information. ‘Your telegram of the 27th not understood. No men as described known in Amsterdam. Cannot trace arrivals.’”
“Well, well,” said Reggie. “Our active and intelligent police force. The case has interest, hasn’t it, Lomas, old thing?”
“What is it you want to suggest, Fortune?” Eddis looked at him keenly.
“I want to point out the evanescence of the evidence—the extraordinary evanescence of the evidence.”
“That’s agreed,” Eddis nodded. “The whole thing is unsatisfactory. The tobacco, so far as it is evidence, turns out to be in favour of the prisoner. The only important witnesses for the prosecution disappear after the trial leaving suspicion of their status. But there remains the fact that the diamonds were found in the prisoner’s room.”
“Oh yes, some one put ’em there,” Reggie smiled.
“Let’s have it clear, Fortune,” said the man of law. “Your suggestion is that the whole case against Wilton was manufactured by these men who have disappeared?”
“That is the provisional hypothesis. Because nothing else covers the facts. There were German materials used, and Wilton has nothing to do with Germany. The diamond merchant came to the flats where Wilton was already living and sought Wilton’s acquaintance. The diamond merchant’s friend popped up just in the nick of time to give indispensable evidence. And the moment Wilton is safe in penal servitude the pair of them vanish, and the only thing we can find out about them is that they aren’t what they pretended to be. Well, the one hypothesis which fits all these facts is that these two fellows wanted to put Dr. Horace Wilton away. Any objection to that, Eddis?”
“There’s only one objection—why? Your theory explains everything that happened, but leaves us without any reason why anything happened at all. That is, it’s an explanation which makes the case more obscure than ever. We can understand why Wilton might have stolen diamonds. Nobody can understand why anyone should want to put him in prison.”