“How had she come to make the disclosures now?”
The witness explained that when she crushed her way into the court a week ago it was with the idea that the prisoner might be her husband. He was not her husband, but when she saw his face she remembered that she had seen him before. A man in the body of the court had followed her out and asked her questions.
“Who was the man?” asked the judge, turning to the sheriff.
The gentleman addressed pointed to a man near at hand, who rose at this reference, with a smile of mingled pride and cunning, as though he felt honored by this public disclosure of his astuteness. He was a small man with a wrinkled face, and a sinister cast in one of his eyes, which lay deep under shaggy brows. We have met him before.
The judge looked steadily at him as he rose in his place. After a minute or two he turned again to look at him. Then he made some note on a paper in his hand.
The witness looked jaded and worn with the excitement. During her examination Sim had never for an instant upraised his eyes from the ground. The eagerness with which Ralph had watched her was written in every muscle of his face. When liberty was given him to question her, he asked in a soft and tender voice if she knew what time of the night it might be when she had seen what she had described.
Between nine and ten o'clock as near as she could say, perhaps fully ten.
Was she sure which side of the bridge she was on—north or south?
“Sure; it was north of the bridge.”
Ralph asked if the records of the coroner's inquiry were at hand. They were not. Could he have them examined? It was needless. But why?