“What’s that go to do with it?” he said. “Are you going to drag in the ‘mysterious stranger’ defense?”
The big lawyer swung around on his feet.
“Your Honor,” he said, addressing the judge, “I object to this expression. It is an unfair expression. It has no place in a judicial trial of which the sole object is to arrive at the truth. The prosecuting attorney has no right to undertake to prejudice the prisoner before the jury. That is an ungenerous expression. If the prisoner did not kill Mr. Collander, some one else did kill him, and if we don’t know, precisely, who that other person was we cannot dismiss him as mythical, as a ‘mysterious stranger,’ as though he were a figment of the imagination.”
The judge did not reply. He was accustomed to these passages between the attorneys, staged always for effect, and he took no part in them if he could avoid it.
The prosecuting attorney replied with ill-concealed irony.
“If the prisoner did not kill him!” he echoed.
“Quite so,” replied the Colonel, “and for your benefit, sir, I will say that I propose to show, in a moment, that she not only did not kill him, but that she could not have killed him.”
The prosecuting attorney made a vague gesture in the air with his extended fingers. The aspect of irony remained.
“Go to it,” he said.
“Now, Ellen,” continued the attorney, “what made you think there was some one outside of the house on the ground below the porch who called Mr. Collander to the door?”