“Inspector, you will charge him on suspicion of the wilful murder of the woman—and, by the way, let one of the men sit with him to-night. I’m going down to the Yard.”
“Very well, sir,” replied the officer, and they all left the room, with the exception of the statuesque constable.
Chapter Twenty Seven.
A Guiltless Crime.
Down one dimly-lit, dreary corridor, along an other, and up a flight of spiral stairs, I walked listlessly, with two warders at my side.
A low door opened, a breath of warm air, a hum of voices, and I was standing in the prisoners’ dock at the Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey.
As I entered and faced the grave-looking judge, and the aldermen in their fur-trimmed scarlet robes seated beside him, I heard the stentorian voice of the usher cry “Silence,” and immediately the clerk rose, and with a paper in his hand, said in clear monotonous tones:
“Prisoner at the bar, you are indicted for that you did on the night of August the fifteenth, eighteen hundred and eighty-seven, wilfully murder Ethel Inglewood, one of Her Majesty’s subjects, at Number 67, Bedford Place, Bloomsbury, by stabbing her with a knife. Are you guilty, or not guilty?”