The Old Man in the Corner eBook

Baroness Emma Orczy
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 258 pages of information about The Old Man in the Corner.

The Old Man in the Corner eBook

Baroness Emma Orczy
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 258 pages of information about The Old Man in the Corner.

“He had heard the threatening voice while sitting with Lord Arthur Skelmerton; then came the cry and groan, and, after that, Lord Arthur’s steps down the stairs.  He himself thought of following to see what had happened, but it was a very dark night and he did not know the grounds very well.  While trying to find his way to the garden steps he heard Lord Arthur’s cry for help, the tramp of the patrolling constables’ horses, and subsequently the whole scene between Lord Arthur, the man Higgins, and the constables.  When he finally found his way to the stairs, Lord Arthur was returning in order to send a groom for police assistance.

“The witness stuck to his points as he had to his guns at Beckfontein a year ago; nothing could shake him, and Sir Marmaduke looked triumphantly across at his opposing colleague.

“With the gallant Colonel’s statements the edifice of the prosecution certainly began to collapse.  You see, there was not a particle of evidence to show that the accused had met and spoken to the deceased after the latter’s visit at the front door of ‘The Elms.’  He told Chipps that he wouldn’t see the visitor, and Chipps went into the hall directly and showed Lavender out the way he came.  No assignation could have been made, no hint could have been given by the murdered man to Lord Arthur that he would go round to the back entrance and wished to see him there.

“Two other guests of Lord Arthur’s swore positively that after Chipps had announced the visitor, their host stayed at the card-table until a quarter to eleven, when evidently he went out to join Colonel McIntosh in the garden.  Sir Marmaduke’s speech was clever in the extreme.  Bit by bit he demolished that tower of strength, the case against the accused, basing his defence entirely upon the evidence of Lord Arthur Skelmerton’s guests that night.

“Until 10.45 Lord Arthur was playing cards; a quarter of an hour later the police were on the scene, and the murder had been committed.  In the meanwhile Colonel McIntosh’s evidence proved conclusively that the accused had been sitting with him, smoking a cigar.  It was obvious, therefore, clear as daylight, concluded the great lawyer, that his client was entitled to a full discharge; nay, more, he thought that the police should have been more careful before they harrowed up public feeling by arresting a high-born gentleman on such insufficient evidence as they had brought forward.

“The question of the knife remained certainly, but Sir Marmaduke passed over it with guarded eloquence, placing that strange question in the category of those inexplicable coincidences which tend to puzzle the ablest detectives, and cause them to commit such unpardonable blunders as the present one had been.  After all, the footman may have been mistaken.  The pattern of that knife was not an exclusive one, and he, on behalf of his client, flatly denied that it had ever belonged to him.

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
The Old Man in the Corner from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.