he would fain see the perpetrators of that fraud on
their trial for perjury, their fraud in no way diminished
Caldigate’s guilt. That a guilty man should
escape out of the hands of justice by any fraud was
wormwood to Judge Bramber. Caldigate was guilty.
The jury had found him so. Could he take upon
himself to say that the finding of the jury was wrong
because the prosecuting party had concocted a fraud
which had not been found out before the verdict was
given? Sir John Joram, whom he had known almost
as a boy, had ‘demanded’ the release of
his client. The word stuck in Judge Bramber’s
throat. The word had been injudicious The more
he thought of the word the more he thought that the
verdict had been a true verdict, in spite of the fraud.
A very honest man was Judge Bramber;—but
human.
He almost made up his mind,—but then was
obliged to confess to himself that he had not quite
done so. ’It taints the entire evidence
with perjury,’ Sir John had said. The woman’s
evidence was absolutely so tainted,—was
defiled with perjury. And the man Crinkett had
been so near the woman that it was impossible to disconnect
them. Who had concocted the fraud? The woman
could hardly have done so without the man’s
connivance. It took him all the morning to think
the matter out, and then he had not made up his mind.
To reverse the verdict would certainly be a thorn
in his side,—a pernicious thorn,—but
one which, if necessary, he would endure. Thorns,
however, such as these are very persuasive.
At last he determined to have inquiry made as to the
woman by the police. She had laid herself open
to an indictment for perjury, and in making inquiry
on that head something further might probably be learned.
How the Conspirators Throve
There had been some indiscretion among Caldigate’s
friends from which it resulted that, while Judge Bramber
was considering the matter, and before the police
intelligence of Scotland Yard even had stirred itself
in obedience to the judge’s orders, nearly all
the circumstances which had been submitted to the
judge had become public. Shand knew all that
Bagwax had done. Bagwax was acquainted with the
whole of Dick’s evidence. And Hester down
at Folking understood perfectly what had been revealed
by each of those enthusiastic allies. Dick, as
we know, had been staying at Folking, and had made
his presence notable throughout the county. He
had succeeded in convincing uncle Babington, and had
been judged to be a false witness by all the Boltons.
In that there had perhaps been no great indiscretion.
But when Bagwax opened a correspondence with Mrs.
John Caldigate and explained to her at great length
all the circumstances of the postmark and the postage-stamps,
and when at her instance he got a day’s holiday
and rushed down to Folking, then, as he felt himself,
he was doing that of which Sir John Joram and Mr.
