“Though your name be Iscariot, yes!” I cry.
The judge frowns, for it seems the demand was addressed to him and not to me; but he permits my acquaintance to enter the box. And now a doubt assails me. What will he say? Add still more damaging testimony, or prove that I am the harmless Bunyan?
He does neither, but in a very composed and assured fashion, that carries conviction with it, he tells the judge that he travelled with me from Paris on the very night of the crime, adding that I had appeared to him a very harmless though somewhat eccentric person. Not the adjectives I should have chosen myself, perhaps; but, I assure you, I should have let him call me vulgar or dirty without a word of protest.
Of course it follows that I cannot be the musical burglar, while as for my friend Fisher, that worthy gentleman is so disconcerted at the turn things have taken that he seems as anxious to withdraw his share of the charge as he was to make it.
I am saved; the case breaks, down.
“How's that?” says the judge.
“Guiltless!” cries the jury.
And so I am a free man once more, and the cook must swear to another mustache.
The first thing I do is to seize my witness and drag him from the court, repeating my thanks all the while.
“But how did you come to be in court?” I ask.