“He’s all right,” I evasively replied. “Never mind him just now. We must really concentrate ourselves on doing something for poor Teddy.”
“Oh, I dare say! Now you mind this, young man!” cried Mrs. Wingham, with sudden vindictiveness. “If he goes to prison you go, too! I won’t ’ear of his going alone. I’ll shout to the police! I’ll ’ave you arrested! He sha’n’t be the only one to suffer, poor young lamb!”
The hair under my wig stood up on end, and even my false whiskers stiffened. The old woman was quite capable of executing her threat, and for a moment I felt, not sixty, but a hundred.
Outwardly, however, I was calm.
“Desperate cases require desperate remedies,” I judicially observed. “Take my arm and let us return to court. We’ll adopt our own line of defence. Come along, ma’am, and for the present kindly remember I am your husband and my name is Wingham.”
The vicious old woman held me so tightly, I knew that if Teddy went under and were condemned she meant me to go under, too. Together we wedged our way to the partition, just above our odoriferous barrister. I was bending to speak to him when suddenly a bell was rung and Teddy was immediately ushered, nay, thrust, in, between a couple of gendarmes.
Poor chap, he was almost unrecognizable, he had been so roughly handled. His smoking-suit was torn, and round his neck, in place of collar and tie, he had knotted a handkerchief, coster fashion; but what mostly disguised and disfigured him was his gashed and puffed face; for in falling down the steps he had fallen plump on a bunch of cactus, scoring him as though he had been mauled by an angry tigress. He never had been pretty, but now he looked exactly like the malefactor that, in the eye of the law, at any rate, I suppose he really was.
“Oh, just look at his face!” gasped Mrs. Wingham. “Oh, the poor creature!”
“Hush!” I whispered; “for goodness’ sake keep calm. And kindly remember he’s our nephew.”
I judged it wisest to hear the evidence against him before considering the line we should take in his defence. I contented myself for the present with whispering to our counsel that the prisoner was our nephew, his arrest a complete mistake, and he himself as innocent of any attempt at robbery as the newly born.