“And all is gas and gaiters. And hooroar for Scotland Yard. And you shall pay for my tea.”
“It was the pistol did for him you know.” Lomas smiled as a man who can afford to smile.
“Childhood’s years are passing o’er us, Lomas,” Reggie murmured. “Soon our schooldays will be done. Cares and sorrows lie before us, Lomas. Hidden dangers, snares unknown. I’ve found the real pistol, old thing. Goodbye.”
Lomas caught him up outside. “I say, Fortune. Without prejudice—what’s your line?”
“Seek not to proticipate,” Reggie smiled. “This gentleman is paying for my tea, Mary. You would be so hasty, you know.”
Mr. Lomas drank whisky and soda.
That was the second skirmish in the Lunt case.
The general action was fought at the assizes. The interest in it began with the cross-examination of Victor Lunt. Victor Lunt, called for the prosecution, made a good impression. He looked harassed and in ill-health, affected as a good brother should be by a brother’s death. But he had command of himself, proved that he had brains as well as the heart displayed by his dull eye and flabby face, he was lucid and to the point. He showed no malice against Cranford. Cranford had called on him on the morning of the murder, complained bitterly of his treatment by Sir Albert Lunt, used violent language about Sir Albert, demanded to know where Sir Albert was, and gone away. Such was Mr. Lunt’s evidence in chief.
Then arose a small and pallid barrister with a priggish nose. He would ask Mr. Lunt to carry his mind back to some earlier transactions. So the story of the expedition to Mozambique was brought out and, such was the simplicity of the priggish little man, the harassed mouth of Mr. Lunt was made to explain that Lunt Brothers had annexed Cranford’s discovery, and that the expedition of Lunt Brothers had left him to die in the bush.
“Are you justifying the murder?” said counsel for the Crown.
“You will understand my friend’s uneasiness, gentlemen,” says the little barrister, and pinned Mr. Lunt to the statement that it was Sir Albert who had planned this iniquitous scheme. “And when Cranford had gone, Mr. Lunt, of course you warned your brother at once this desperate fellow was on his track. No? Curious. Yet you went down in your motor to your own house at Colney Towers, not much more than a mile away. You reached the house between 12 and 12:30? Perhaps? Oh, don’t begin to forget things now. What did you do then?”
As far as he remembered Mr. Lunt took a stroll.
“On your oath—did you not go and meet your brother?”
Mr. Lunt (who had sat down) started up to deny it. He had not gone outside his own park.
“Would it surprise you to hear that on the path from your house to Sir Albert’s there were found next day fresh footprints which your boots fit?” Mr. Lunt often walked that way. “What clothes were you wearing?” Mr. Lunt could not remember. He went as he was. “You don’t deny you were wearing a coat with an Astrakhan collar?” Mr. Lunt could not say—he had such a coat—he did often wear it. “Very well. And, as you were saying, you have had quarrels with your brother about the policy of the firm?”
“Not quarrels, no,” Mr. Lunt protested eagerly, and struggled to explain them away.
“On the day after the murder you had a large scratch on your forehead which was not there before the murder?” Mr. Lunt could not remember the scratch. Anybody might have a scratch. He was let go. And the jury looked at each other.
After lunch, first witness for the defence, came Lady Lunt to say that the scheme to trick Cranford had been Victor’s, and that on many subjects there were bitter quarrels between Victor and Albert. Radnor Hall corroborated. Reggie followed, and brought the crisis of the battle.
Mr. Fortune, eminent in his profession, had examined the body. Clutched in the left hand were some black tufts—fragments of Astrakhan. When he visited the scene of the crime he had found on the brambles close by other tufts of Astrakhan. He had traced recent footprints which corresponded exactly to the size of a pair of Mr. Albert Lunt’s boots. He produced measurements and casts. In the depths of one of the neighbouring coverts he had found a Smith-Southron .38 magazine pistol, from which three shots had been fired. And a vigorous cross-examination could do nothing with these facts. Then came other witnesses to prove that Victor Lunt had been wearing Astrakhan, and Cranford a raincoat.
Last witness for the defence—Cranford himself. Last question for the defence—“On your oath, did you murder Albert Lunt?”
“On my oath, no.”
The once-confident counsel for the Crown went delicately now. It was plain enough that he thought his case did not justify him in pressing the prisoner hard. “When you were told Albert Lunt was out you made no further attempt to see him. Why?”
“I thought it was a plant. I thought the two of them were putting me off.”
“So you went straight back to town?”
“Yes. I caught the 2:50. You know that.” Counsel for the Crown gave it up.
A speech of sledgehammer logic from the priggish little barrister, exhibiting Cranford as a man much wronged, and Victor Lunt as the villain of the piece—a speech the more effective from its studied absence of passion. A summing up from the judge dead against Victor Lunt. A quick verdict of Not Guilty. Cheers in court. Nurse Dauntsey crying and laughing and feeling blindly for Reggie Fortune’s hand.
In the corridor outside, “That’s a case, my boy, that’s a case.” The little Jew solicitor jumped and gurgled. “Some sensation! What, Mr. Lomas, some sensation in the Yard.”
“Baddish break, Lomas. ‘Zeal, all zeal, Mr. Easy,’ ” Reggie grinned.
“Why the devil couldn’t you give it me?” Lomas thrust by in a hurry.
