“Now, what evidence can you give regarding the charge against the prisoner?”
There was a dead and painful silence.
“We first met at the Hotel Isotta, Genoa, about a month after the murder in Bedford Place. We frequently played écarté together, and on one occasion he paid me a debt with the three five-pound notes I now produce.”
“And what is there peculiar about them?”
“I have since ascertained that their numbers correspond with those now known to have been stolen from the house in Bedford Place.”
The thought flashed across my mind that once, when I had lost to him, I had discharged the debt with three notes. From whom I received them I could not tell.
“What else do you know about the affair?” was the insinuating question of the prosecuting counsel.
“Well; some three months after this I was present at the Central Tribunal at St. Petersburg, when prisoner was sentenced to the mines for complicity in the murder of a hotel-keeper. The sentence, however, was never carried out, for on the way to Siberia he escaped, returning to England.”
“It’s a lie! I was exiled without trial,” I shouted. Amid the loud cries of “Silence,” counsel turned to the judge, and with a cruel smile about his lips remarked, “You see, my lord, prisoner admits he was exiled.”
Mr Roland made an impatient motion to me to preserve silence; so seeing my protests were useless, I sank again into my chair, and tried to conquer my fate by bearing it.