“Now tell me this,” I demand, sternly. “Have you always behaved towards her as an honorable policeman?”
Would you believe it? This question also is disallowed! But I think I have damaged Lecoq all the same.
Next comes Fisher, red-faced, more pompous than ever, and inspired, I can see, with vindictive hatred towards myself. It appears that he is a London merchant; that his daughter heard a tapping on her window and called her father; that he and his servant caught me in the act of entering the chaste bedchamber through a broken window.
At this point I ask if I may put a question. The judge says yes.
He has to admit that it did; very ungraciously, however.
He cannot answer this; but the judge, much to my surprise, comes to the rescue and elicits the fact that there are six.
“How far had I gone through a twelfth of your window?” I ask.
His face gets redder, and there is a laugh through the court. I feel that I have “scored a try,” as they say, and my spirits begin to rise again.
But, alas! they are soon damped. Mrs. Thompson's butler steps into the witness-box, and a more shameless liar I have never heard. Yes, he remembers an organ-grinder coming to the house on various occasions during the past fortnight. Here I interpose.
“Not being interested in such kinds of music, I cannot say.”
“Possibly you have a poor ear?” I suggest.
“My ear is as right as some people's, but it has not been accustomed to the hand-organ,” says the butler, with a magnificence that seems to impress even the judge.
“You should have it boxed, my friend,” I cannot help retorting, though I fear this does not meet the unqualified approval of the judge.
Next he is asked for an account of his dealings with the musician when that gentleman visited the kitchen upon the night of the burglary, and it appears that, shortly after the grinder's departure, he lost consciousness with a completeness and rapidity that can only have been caused by some insidious drug surreptitiously introduced into the glass of beer he happened to be finishing at that moment. He scorns the insinuation (made by myself) that he and the musician were drinking together; he would not so far demean himself. That outcast did, however, on one occasion, approach suspiciously near his half-empty glass.