“And therefore with,—but no matter,” he said slowly. “I wish, for your own sake, and not merely to satisfy my curiosity, that you would be frank with me, or, if not with me, at least with Sir George. However, I’ll do what you ask. I’ll make no further attempts, at present, to discover the original of that portrait.”
That was not precisely what I had asked him, but I let it pass. I knew by his way of saying it that he shared my conviction—and Jim’s—that it was Anne’s portrait right enough; but I had gained my point, and that was the main thing.
The hearing at the police court next day was more of an ordeal than I had anticipated, chiefly because of my physical condition. I had seemed astonishingly fit when I started,—in a cab, accompanied by a couple of policemen,—considering the extent of my injuries, and the sixty hours’ journey I had just come through; and I was anxious to get the thing over. But when I got into the crowded court, where I saw numbers of familiar faces, including Mary’s little white one,—she had come up from Cornwall after all, bless her!—I suddenly felt myself as weak as a cat. I was allowed a seat in the dock, and I leaned back in it with what was afterwards described by the reporters as “an apathetic air,” though I was really trying my hardest to avoid making an ass of myself by fainting outright. That effort occupied all the energy I had, and I only heard scraps of the evidence, which seemed, to my dulled brain, to refer to some one else and not to me at all.
At last there came a confused noise, shouting and clapping, and above it a stentorian voice.
“Silence! Silence in the court!”
Some one grasped my right arm—just where the bandage was, though he didn’t know that—and hurt me so badly that I started up involuntarily, to find Sir George and Southbourne just in front of the dock holding out their hands to me, and I heard a voice somewhere near.
“Come along, sir, this way; you can follow to the ante-room, gentlemen; can’t have a demonstration in Court.”
I felt myself guided along by the grip on my arm that was like a red-hot vice; there were people pressing about me, all talking at once, and shaking hands with me.
I heard Southbourne say, sharper and quicker than I’d ever heard him speak before:
“Here, look out! Stand back, some of you!”