"He declines to do so. But," the witness added, with emotion, "he has denied his guilt to me from the first, in the most decisive manner: and I solemnly believe him to be innocent. Why he will not state where he was, I cannot conceive; but not a shade of doubt rests upon my mind that he could state it if he chose, and that it would be the means of establishing the fact of his absence. I would not assert this if I did not believe it," said the witness, raising his trembling hand. "They were both my boys: the one destroyed was my eldest, perhaps my dearest; and I declare that I would not, knowingly, screen his assassin, although that assassin were his brother."
The case for the prosecution concluded, and the defence was entered upon. The prisoner's counsel—two of them eminent men, Mr. Chattaway himself being no secondary light in the forensic world—laboured under one disadvantage, as it appeared to the crowded court. They exerted all their eloquence in seeking to divert the guilt from the prisoner: but they could not—distort facts as they might, call upon imagination as they would—they could not conjure up the ghost of any other channel to which to direct suspicion. There lay the weak point, as it had lain throughout. If Herbert Dare was not guilty, who was? The family, quietly sleeping in their beds, were beyond the pale of suspicion; the household equally so; and no trace of any midnight intruder to the house could be found. It was a grave stumbling-block for the prisoner's counsel; but such stumbling-blocks are as nothing to an expert pleader. Bit by bit Mr. Chattaway disposed, or seemed to dispose, of every argument that could tell against the prisoner. The presence of the cloak in the dining-room, from which so much appearance of guilt had been deduced, he converted into a negative proof of innocence. "Had he been the one engaged in the struggle," argued the learned Q.C., "would he have been mad enough to leave his own cloak there, underneath his victim, a damning proof of guilt? No! that, at any rate, he would have taken away. The very fact of the cloak being under the murdered man was a most indisputable proof, as he regarded it, that the prisoner remained totally ignorant of what had happened—ignorant of his unfortunate brother's being at all in the dining-room. Why! had he only surmised that his brother was lying, wounded or dead, in the room, would he not have hastened to remove his cloak out of it, before it should be seen there, knowing, as he must know, that, from the very terms on which he and his brother had been, it would be looked upon as a proof of his guilt?" The argument told well with the jury—probably with the judge.
Bit by bit, so did he thus dispose of the suspicious circumstances: of all, except one. And that was the great one, the one that nobody could get over: the refusal of the prisoner to state where he was that night. "All in good time, gentlemen of the jury," said Mr. Chattaway, some murmured words reaching his ear that the omission was deemed ominous. "I am coming to that later; and I shall prove as complete and distinct an alibi as it was ever my lot to submit to an enlightened court."
The court listened, the jury listened, the spectators listened, and "hoped he might." He had spoken, for the most part, to incredulous ears.
CHAPTER XI.
THE WITNESSES FOR THE ALIBI.
When the speech of the counsel ended, and the time came for the production of the witness or witnesses who were to prove the alibi, there appeared to be some delay. The intense heat of the court had been growing greater with every hour. The rays of the afternoon sun, now sinking lower and lower in the heavens, had only brought with them a more deadly feeling of suffocation. But, to go out for a breath of air, even had the thronged state of the passages permitted the movement, appeared to enter into no one's thoughts. Their suspense was too keen, their interest too absorbing. Who were those mysterious witnesses, that would testify to the innocence of Herbert Dare?
A stir at the extreme end of the court, where it joined the other passage. Every eye was strained to see, every ear to listen, as an usher came clearing the way. "By your leave there—by your leave; room for a witness!"
The spectators looked, and stretched their necks, and looked again. A few among them experienced a strange thrill of disappointment, and felt that they should have much pleasure in being allowed the privilege of boxing the usher's ears, for he preceded no one more important than Richard Winthorne, the lawyer. Ah, but wait a bit! What short and slight figure is it that Mr. Winthorne is guiding along? The angry crowd have not caught sight of her yet.