“You see he was in the awful dilemma—­a perfectly natural one, by the way—­of being absolutely incapable of proving an alibi.  The crime—­if crime there was—­had been committed three weeks ago.  A man about town like Mr. Frank Errington might remember that he spent certain hours of a special afternoon at his club, or in the Park, but it is very doubtful in nine cases out of ten if he can find a friend who could positively swear as to having seen him there.  No! no!  Mr. Errington was in a tight corner, and he knew it.  You see, there were—­besides the evidence—­two or three circumstances which did not improve matters for him.  His hobby in the direction of toxicology, to begin with.  The police had found in his room every description of poisonous substances, including prussic acid.

“Then, again, that journey to Marseilles, the start for Colombo, was, though perfectly innocent, a very unfortunate one.  Mr. Errington had gone on an aimless voyage, but the public thought that he had fled, terrified at his own crime.  Sir Arthur Inglewood, however, here again displayed his marvellous skill on behalf of his client by the masterly way in which he literally turned all the witnesses for the Crown inside out.

“Having first got Mr. Andrew Campbell to state positively that in the accused he certainly did not recognize the man in the tweed suit, the eminent lawyer, after twenty minutes’ cross-examination, had so completely upset the stockbroker’s equanimity that it is very likely he would not have recognized his own office-boy.

“But through all his flurry and all his annoyance Mr. Andrew Campbell remained very sure of one thing; namely, that the lady was alive and cheerful, and talking pleasantly with the man in the tweed suit up to the moment when the latter, having shaken hands with her, left her with a pleasant ‘Au revoir!  Don’t be late to-night.’  He had heard neither scream nor struggle, and in his opinion, if the individual in the tweed suit had administered a dose of poison to his companion, it must have been with her own knowledge and free will; and the lady in the train most emphatically neither looked nor spoke like a woman prepared for a sudden and violent death.

“Mr. James Verner, against that, swore equally positively that he had stood in full view of the carriage door from the moment that Mr. Campbell got out until he himself stepped into the compartment, that there was no one else in that carriage between Farringdon Street and Aldgate, and that the lady, to the best of his belief, had made no movement during the whole of that journey.

“No; Frank Errington was not committed for trial on the capital charge,” said the man in the corner with one of his sardonic smiles, “thanks to the cleverness of Sir Arthur Inglewood, his lawyer.  He absolutely denied his identity with the man in the tweed suit, and swore he had not seen Mrs. Hazeldene since eleven o’clock in the morning of that fatal day.  There was no proof that he had; moreover, according to Mr. Campbell’s opinion, the man in the tweed suit was in all probability not the murderer.  Common sense would not admit that a woman could have a deadly poison injected into her without her knowledge, while chatting pleasantly to her murderer.