“Birchill left the flat at nine o’clock,” continued Mr. Walters, who had now reached the vital facts of the night of the murder.  “I ask the jury to take careful note of the time and the subsequent times mentioned, for they have an important bearing on the circumstantial evidence against the accused man.  He returned, according to Hill’s evidence, shortly after midnight.  Evidence will be called to show that Birchill, or a man answering his description, boarded a tramcar at Euston Road at 9.30 p.m., and journeyed in it to Hampstead.  He was observed both at Euston Road and the Hampstead terminus by the conductor, because of his obvious desire to avoid attention.  There were only two other passengers on the top of the car when it left Euston Road.  The conductor directed the attention of the driver to his movements, and they both watched him till he disappeared in the direction of the Heath.  In fairness to the prisoner, it was necessary to point out, however, that neither the conductor nor the driver can identify him positively as the man they had seen on their car that night, but both will swear that to the best of their belief Birchill is the man.  Assuming that it was the prisoner who travelled to Hampstead by the Euston Road tram—­a route he would probably prefer because it took him to Hampstead by the most unfrequented way—­he would have a distance of nearly a mile to walk across Hampstead Heath to Tanton Gardens, where Sir Horace Fewbanks’s house was situated.  The evidence of the tram-men is that he set off across the Heath at a very rapid rate.  The tram reached Hampstead at four minutes past ten, so that, by walking fast, it would be possible for a young energetic man to reach Riversbrook before a quarter to eleven.  Another five minutes would see an experienced housebreaker like Birchill inside the house.  At twenty minutes past eleven a young man named Ryder, who had wandered into Tanton Gardens while endeavouring to take a short cut home, heard the sound of a report, which at the time he took to be the noise of a door violently slammed, coming from the direction of Riversbrook.  A few moments afterwards he saw a man climb over the front fence of Riversbrook to the street.  He drew back cautiously into the shade of one of the chestnut trees of the street avenue, and saw the man plainly as he ran past him.  Ryder will swear that the man he saw was Birchill.”

“It’s a lie!  It’s a lie!  You’re trying to hang him, you wicked man.  Oh, Fred, Fred!”

The cry proceeded from the girl Doris Fanning.  Her unbalanced temperament had been unable to bear the strain of sitting there and listening to Mr. Walters’ cold inexorable construction of a legal chain of evidence against her lover.  She rose to her feet, shrieking wildly, and gesticulating menacingly at Mr. Walters.  The Society ladies turned eagerly in their seats to take in through their lorgnons every detail of the interruption.

“Remove that woman,” the judge sternly commanded.