Meantime, in French fashion, the President of the Court—a robust old man with a white beard and a red face, like a neatly trimmed Father Christmas—after reading the act of accusation, was the first to tackle and brow-beat our unfortunate friend. To do him justice, Teddy kept beautifully cool (he says now he recognized me and my wink through the disguise, and knew he was safe) and answered nothing through his puffed mouth but Nong! and Jammy! Every now and then the President, in the politest manner in the world, observed, “Vous mentez, jeune homme!” or “C’est faux!” while the judge on his right, a battered little man with blue glasses and his mouth all fallen in, ejaculated “Quelle effronterie!” or “C’est abominable!” at intervals.
As a matter of fact, the evidence against him (according to our English notions, at any rate) was far from strong. There were croupiers present ready to swear to having seen him in the rooms, charging down on the tables with a revolver; there were the men from the door to swear they had noticed him rush past; and there were the firemen who had found him crawling away behind the signal-box, down on the line, after we had got clear away. Very good. But the cactus had, for the present, so disfigured him, that an adroit cross-examination could not fail very much to shake them, and that, no doubt, the President felt; for, after wrangling with Teddy for some time, and receiving nothing but an eruption of Nongs and Jammys for his pains, he ill-temperedly cried identification would be useless and unfair with the accused’s face in its present condition, and that, until the swelling disappeared, he should remand him; by which time, he sardonically added, he had no doubt the other malefactors would be before him in a row.
Teddy gave me a piteous glance, and, nerving myself, I nudged our barrister, whom all along I had been coaching, and up he got.
Now, most fortunately, when poor Teddy was caught, neither revolver nor spoil were found on him; spoil he had never had, and the revolver, after the final discharge, he had hurled over the embankment into the sea. And he had always told the same story: that he had truly enough been in the rooms, but had nothing whatever to do with the robbery, having been forced out in the disturbance, and run as the others had; running, in his alarm, he knew not where, until he fell down the steps, lost his senses, and, coming to, found himself in the hands of the police. He was a quiet, respectable young Englishman, he declared, come to Monte Carlo for his health, and staying with his aunt at the hotel “Monopôle,” to whom (as I thought) he had early despatched a note, announcing himself as her nephew and in trouble, and imploring help.
And here we were to claim him, after so unpleasant an experience, Milor and Madame Ving-ham—so the barrister announced us!—persons of the highest consideration and wealth, constant visitors on the shores of the hospitable Riviera; in short, this, that, and the other, all couched in the finest language, and none of it in the least true. And then, in a final peroration, amid murmurs of sympathy, culminating in a burst of applause, the barrister threw up his fat hands, and invoked justice, mercy, and international law (not to mention the hospitality of old Greece and Rome), and, sitting down, wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his gown; while Madame Ving-ham judiciously lifted up her troubled voice, and wept louder than ever.
When the emotion had subsided, the President called me forward, and for the second time that morning my unlucky resemblance to another gentleman (a nobleman, by-the-way, as it turned out) was likely to get me into further trouble; for in me, Vincent Blacker, disguised as an old boy of sixty, the President imagined he recognized, just as my club friend had done an hour before, a distinguished guest he had met the previous evening at the Prince’s table; with whom he had held an improving discussion as to the present unsatisfactory condition of the British House of Lords, and the best method of amending, without destroying it.
“Comment, Milor!” he cried, in astonishment, looking at me over his glasses; “c’est votre Seigneurie?”
Good Lord, I said to myself, here we are again—giving the old man a polite but alarmed bow and smile.
But the President knew me as Milor B., he ventured to observe (I really don’t quite like to give the illustrious name), and here was our advocate announcing me as some one else!
I hastened to explain, with perspiration on my brow, that Ving-ham was my second title, and in an unfortunate affair of this kind—Cour d’Assises, in short—I did not care for my first to be publicly mixed up.