I could scarcely believe my own eyes at first. But it was the man--if one had seen him once, there was no mistaking him. To me he seemed to be peculiarly ill at ease--an uneasiness which was not by any means concealed by an attempt to carry things off with a flourish. He bowed to the judge, he bowed to the jury; I believe he was going to bow to the lawyers too, only at the last moment he changed his mind. He placed his silk hat on the rail at his side. He took off one of his brand-new gloves. Unbuttoning his overcoat, he opened it so as to display his chest. There was something about him which destroyed the effect he evidently intended to produce--it made the people smile.
The judge was serious enough.
"What do you mean by keeping the court waiting?"
Alexander Taunton--or whatever his name was--pressed the finger-tips of his left hand against his chest.
"I beg your lordship's pardon. I had just that moment stepped outside."
I could have wagered he had stepped outside to drink just another drop to help him to keep his courage up. The more I looked at him the plainer I saw that there was quite a hunted look about his eyes.
The story he told in response to Sir Haselton Jardine's questions filled me with something more than amazement. Of course he was the Taunton whose evidence at the examination before the magistrates one had read in the papers, but I had never for an instant suspected--who would have done?--that the two men were, or could be, one and the same. By the time he had finished he had hammered every nail in Tommy's coffin. And the strangest part about it was that--as none knew better than I--certainly the larger portion of what he said was true.
He had travelled from Brighton in the next compartment to Tommy and I. Think of it! On that fateful Sunday night I had journeyed with one brother half the way and with the other brother the rest of the way to town.
He had heard us having our little discussion. He had heard some of the things we had said to each other--especially some of the very strongest. He had heard the banging of the door as I fell. According to him, the sound had so agitated him that he had not known what to do. He suspected that something had happened, but he had not known what. He owned now that he ought to have given the alarm and stopped the train, but at the moment he lost his presence of mind. On reaching Victoria he found Tommy sitting in the next compartment alone. Blood was flowing from a wound in his cheek. Prisoner's own handkerchief being soaked with blood, witness lent him one of his own--a silk one. On which prisoner threw his bloodstained handkerchief out of the window.
At this point, altogether unexpectedly, Sir Haselton Jardine sat down. Mr. Bates got up. As he did so, the witness looked over his shoulder as if he would have liked to have turned tail and run.