"THE TICKET COLLECTOR SPECIALLY NOTICED HIM."
"Now, when I'd conned the evidence over—additional evidence to what I've told you, but all tending to the same end—I came to the conclusion that Guide was as sane as any of us are, and that, as a defence, insanity wouldn't have a leg to stand upon. 'The fellow,' I said, 'had much better enter a plea of guilty and let me pile up a long list of extenuating circumstances. A jury will always listen to those, and feeling grateful for being excused a long and wearisome trial, recommend to mercy out of sheer gratitude.' I wrote a note to this effect. On its receipt the solicitor came to see me—by the way, he was Barnes, a man of my own year at Cambridge.
"'My dear Grayson,' said he, 'I'm not altogether a fool. I know as well as you do that Guide would have the best chance if he pleaded guilty; but the difficult part of it is that he flatly refuses to do any such thing. He says he no more killed this fellow Walker than you or I did. I pointed out to him that the man couldn't very conveniently have slain himself, as the wound was well over at the top of his head, and had obviously been the result of a most terrific blow. At the P.M. it was shown that Walker's skull was of abnormal thickness, and the force required to drive through it even a heavy, sharp-pointed instrument like the pickaxe, must have been something tremendous.
"'I tell you, Grayson, I impressed upon the fellow that the case was as black as ink against him, and that he'd only irritate the jury by holding out; but I couldn't move him. He held doggedly to his tale—he had not killed Andrew Walker.'
"'He's not the first man who's stuck to an unlikely lie like that,' I remarked.
"'The curious part of it is,' said Barnes, 'I'm convinced that the man believes himself to be telling the absolute truth.'
"'Then what explanation has he to offer?'
"GUIDE WAS ARRESTED AT THE WEST INDIA DOCK."
"'None worth listening to. He owns that he and Walker had a fierce quarrel over money matters, which culminated in a personal struggle. He knows that he had one blow on the head which dazed him, and fancies that he must have had a second which reduced him to unconsciousness. When next he knew what was happening, he saw Walker lying on the floor, stone dead, though he was still warm and supple. On the floor was the pickaxe, with one of its points slimy with blood. How it came to be so he couldn't tell. He picked it up and laid it on a seat. Then in an instant the thought flashed across him how terribly black things looked against himself. He saw absolutely no chance of disproving them, and with the usual impulse of crude minds resolved at once to quit the country. With that idea he got out at the Shaftesbury Road Station, and being an ignorant man and without money, made his way down to the Ratcliff Highway—beg its pardon, St. George's High Street. Using that as a centre, he smelt about the docks at Limehouse and Millwall trying for a job in the stokehold; but as that neighbourhood is one of the best watched spots on earth, it is not a matter for surprise that he was very soon captured. That's about all I can tell you.'