“I’ve seen some of the biggest larks when chaps have been trying to do this sort of thing on their own, that ever you can imagine. Sometimes when I’m a bit down-hearted over anything, or if the wife’s a bit aggravatin’, I just cast my mind back and—”
The warrant-officer laughed again, and, taking off his helmet, mopped the inside of it with his handkerchief.
“Never, I suppose,” said Erb, a little nettled by this ill-timed hilarity, “seen a man in the witness box turned thoroughly inside out?”
“Not by an amateur.”
“Never seen him pinned down to certain facts, never watched him being led on and on and on, until he finds that he hasn’t got a shred of a reputation, a remnant of a character, not a single white spot of innocence or—”
“I like your talk, old man,” interrupted the warrant-officer, fixing on his helmet, “and I wish I could stay to hear more of it. But take care you don’t wear your face out. So long!”
The police of London are not infallible, but the first prophecies of the warrant-officer seemed likely to prove correct. Erb, determined not to fetter himself by legal knowledge, nevertheless found information thrust upon him, and this confirmed the statement that the police-court proceedings would be of a simple and formal nature. He regretted the delay, for he was eager to get to close quarters with the firm, and he spent his days in collecting evidence, he walked about at night, always taking in Camberwell in the tour that he might look up at her window, rehearsing the questions that he would put to the firm, imagining contests of words with counsel on the other side, contests from which he always emerged victorious. Spanswick had at last given up all pretence of being a railway carman, and had resigned his membership (this to the relief of Payne and of Erb); it made Erb stop and think for a few minutes, when one afternoon, looking out of his office window he saw Spanswick driving a single-horse van belonging to the Neckinger Road firm.
Nothing could be more gratifying than the notice accorded by the evening papers to the hearing at the police-court. It happened on a day when little else of importance occurred, so that two journals had the item on their placards—
“ALLEGED NEWSPAPER LIBEL,”
and one of them gave an astonishing portrait of Erb, “Sketched by our Artist in Court,” declared the legend underneath, as though this were any excuse. Railway carmen from all quarters somehow managed to include Southwark Police Court in their rounds at the precise hour of the hearing of the case, and when Payne and another householder gave their names in for the purpose of bail they cheered, and the magistrate threatening to have them expelled, they cheered again and filed out at the door.