“Such a thing might have been planned, arranged, practised, and ultimately, after a great deal of trouble, successfully carried out, but human intelligence could not grasp the other as a possibility.

“Still the judge wavered.  The eminent K.C. had shaken but not shattered his belief in the prisoner’s guilt.  But there was one point more, and this Oranmore, with the skill of a dramatist, had reserved for the fall of the curtain.

“He noted every sign in the judge’s face, he guessed that his client was not yet absolutely safe, then only did he produce his last two witnesses.

“One of them was Mary Sullivan, one of the housemaids in the Fitzwilliam mansion.  She had been sent up by the cook at a quarter past four o’clock on the afternoon of February 1st with some hot water, which the nurse had ordered, for the master’s room.  Just as she was about to knock at the door Mr. Wethered was coming out of the room.  Mary stopped with the tray in her hand, and at the door Mr. Wethered turned and said quite loudly:  ’Now, don’t fret, don’t be anxious; do try and be calm.  Your will is safe in my pocket, nothing can change it or alter one word of it but yourself.’

“It was, of course, a very ticklish point in law whether the housemaid’s evidence could be accepted.  You see, she was quoting the words of a man since dead, spoken to another man also dead.  There is no doubt that had there been very strong evidence on the other side against Percival Brooks, Mary Sullivan’s would have counted for nothing; but, as I told you before, the judge’s belief in the prisoner’s guilt was already very seriously shaken, and now the final blow aimed at it by Mr. Oranmore shattered his last lingering doubts.

“Dr. Mulligan, namely, had been placed by Mr. Oranmore into the witness-box.  He was a medical man of unimpeachable authority, in fact, absolutely at the head of his profession in Dublin.  What he said practically corroborated Mary Sullivan’s testimony.  He had gone in to see Mr. Brooks at half-past four, and understood from him that his lawyer had just left him.

“Mr. Brooks certainly, though terribly weak, was calm and more composed.  He was dying from a sudden heart attack, and Dr. Mulligan foresaw the almost immediate end.  But he was still conscious and managed to murmur feebly:  ’I feel much easier in my mind now, doctor—­have made my will—­Wethered has been—­he’s got it in his pocket—­it is safe there—­safe from that—­’ But the words died on his lips, and after that he spoke but little.  He saw his two sons before he died, but hardly knew them or even looked at them.

“You see,” concluded the man in the corner, “you see that the prosecution was bound to collapse.  Oranmore did not give it a leg to stand on.  The will was forged, it is true, forged in the favour of Percival Brooks and of no one else, forged for him and for his benefit.  Whether he knew and connived at the forgery was never proved or, as far as I know, even hinted, but it was impossible to go against all the evidence, which pointed that, as far as the act itself was concerned, he at least was innocent.  You see, Dr. Mulligan’s evidence was not to be shaken.  Mary Sullivan’s was equally strong.