“Aye, I thowt as much,” he said, shaking his head despairingly. “And you mark my words, Mr. Porry, it will be a —— cross between them two. Thet Kelly, the plaintiff, ’e’s an Irishman, too.”
I chuckled and did not deny the possibility. It was amusing to watch my client listen to McCall, and note his intense relief when he found that the Gaming Act really worked as he had been told it would, even in the hands of an Irishman.
And talking of Irishmen reminds me of the story of “The Arabian and the Merchant,” which from its remoteness from the every-day affairs of the circuit is almost as one of Scheherazadé’s own delightful tales. I can fancy Schariar would have ordered just such a machine himself as was the casus belli in this case. For the dispute was over a piece of machinery which a firm of Manchester merchants had sold to a potentate called the Malektjar of Bushire. The machine was ordered to be made to grind corn, bottle soda-water, and make ices, and when it left this country the evidence was that it could do all these things. In Persia it was carried in pieces up country with an engineer, who put it together and set it in motion. The local holy men of
Bushire, honestly believing that the machine was some kind of Nonconformist demon, and a danger to the national religion, roused up the populace to pelt it with sand and murder its acolyte, the engineer. The latter escaped with his life, but the machine came to a standstill.
The Arabian who had introduced the business to the merchants now quarrelled with them over the incidence of the loss. The case was full of detail, and drifted slowly along to a settlement. During its progress some eminent Persians visited the Mayor of Manchester, and we got an order to examine them on commission about the machine which, it was alleged, they had seen. This took place before the Registrar of the High Court. Two gorgeous Easterns with a suite of attendants and an interpreter duly arrived, and it took fully an hour to get them sworn. The potentates desired to kiss the tail of a sacred cow. The Registrar held that it was not his business to keep one in the King Street office, and counsel indulged in a learned argument as to whose duty it was. Ultimately the witnesses saluted a Reference Library translation of the Koran, and with doubt and hesitation and not without prejudice gave evidence through the interpreter. The evidence of the first was, “I have never seen the machine. I have heard it is a false god. They light fires before it, and it waves its arms.”
Further testimony was successfully objected to as hearsay. The second was more knowledgeable. “I have seen the machine. It is no god at all.
True it is they light fires before it, but it does not wave its arms, it lies still.” On cross-examination the witness said he had seen the machine many times, and “it grew red with years.” A long examination failed to elicit from the interpreter whether this was rust, and after much courtesy and salaams the witnesses left, hugely pleased with themselves and their adventure. Soon afterwards briefs were delivered and the assizes came along, and peace was made between the Arabian and the merchant with honour, and, if I remember rightly, each party paid their own costs and lived happily ever afterwards. And, talking of briefs, that reminds me of the story of “The Welsh Rector and the Presbyterian Poacher”—but I forgot. I told you that one in “Judgment’s in Vacation.”