pocket-book was produced, and Karl Müller, who had returned to the
court, easily identified it as having belonged to his dear and lamented
friend 'Villiam.'

"This was the first blow to the case against the accused. It was a
pretty stiff one, you will admit. Already it had begun to collapse like
a house of cards. Still, there was the assignation, and the undisputed
meeting between Smethurst and Kershaw, and those two and a half hours of
a foggy evening to satisfactorily account for."

The man in the corner made a long pause, keeping the girl on
tenterhooks. He had fidgeted with his bit of string till there was not
an inch of it free from the most complicated and elaborate knots.

"I assure you," he resumed at last, "that at that very moment the whole
mystery was, to me, as clear as daylight. I only marvelled how his
Honour could waste his time and mine by putting what he thought were
searching questions to the accused relating to his past. Francis
Smethurst, who had quite shaken off his somnolence, spoke with a curious
nasal twang, and with an almost imperceptible soupçon of foreign accent,
He calmly denied Kershaw's version of his past; declared that he had
never been called Barker, and had certainly never been mixed up in any
murder case thirty years ago.

"'But you knew this man Kershaw,' persisted his Honour, 'since you wrote
to him?'

"'Pardon me, your Honour,' said the accused quietly, 'I have never, to
my knowledge, seen this man Kershaw, and I can swear that I never wrote
to him.'