"It was insufferable."
The barrister leaned forward persuasively. "How about this for a suggestion? I put it to you: was it not to the prisoner personally that the deceased was offensive? And did not the prisoner lose his temper, and retaliate by throwing the chisel?"
"Nothing of the sort. I have told you before: there was no quarrel of any kind. The deceased was laughing up to the last moment, and what the prisoner did was done in the interests of decency. It was impossible to sit still and listen to the things that were comin' out of that man's mouth."
"Come, come, Mr. Smith! As a man of the world, are you going to ask us to believe that the prisoner—who, I gather, has knocked about all over the world, in countries which aren't precisely like a Sunday school—do you seriously expect us to understand that he was so much upset by an ordinary after-dinner story as to lose all self-control, and endanger his liberty, if not his life?"
"I do not expect you to understand anything," said Denis, serenely insolent. "I was addressin' the gentlemen of the jury."
"Why can't he speak out? What's he hiding?" Mr. Gardiner whispered feverishly to Tom. Tom could only shake his head and pull his mustache. Certain memories were stirring uncomfortably. What was it Harry had said about having his hands tied, not being free to explain? He had never given it another thought until this minute.
Meanwhile Denis, already convicted of tampering with the truth on behalf of his friend (for every one believed he had suppressed a speech that told against the prisoner), was being taken through the rest of his evidence. Hancock was trying to show his bias: that he would twist the truth in Gardiner's favor, and tell only the minimum against him. In this topsy-turvy business Denis was virtually on the side of the defense. He had to suffer for his sympathies. His self-respect was stripped bare. Yet it was only by guesswork that Gardiner could divine his feelings; the harder Fate hit him, the stiffer grew his back. How Gardiner envied that effortless and natural control!
Hancock finished, and counsel for the defense rose to cross-examine. Bullard, K.C., was a long, lank, untidy figure, and had a hesitating, negligent way of speech. He began with some unimportant minor points slurred over in the examination-in-chief. Then came a pause, during which he gazed at his brief, the people whispered, and the prisoner yawned. Then a bombshell.
"I have only one more question to trouble you with, Mr. Merion-Smith," he said, looking up. "Did the deceased, in that last speech which you cannot remember, make any mention of Mrs. Trent?"
Denis's head went up with a jerk. A thrill went round the court, but was instantly stilled. Bullard was repeating his question in another form.