Viner leaned closer to Mr. Pawle.
“Do you see?” he whispered. “Hyde evidently recognizes one of those two! Now—which?”
Mr. Pawle glanced at the prisoner. Hyde’s face, hitherto pale, had flushed a little, and his eyes had grown bright; he looked as if he had suddenly seen a friend’s face in a hostile crowd. But Mr. Millington-Bywater, who had been bending over his papers, suddenly looked up with another question, and Hyde again turned his attention to him.
“All that you really know of this matter,” asked Mr. Millington-Bywater, “is that you chanced to turn up Lonsdale Passage, saw a man lying on the pavement and a ring close by, and that, being literally starving and desperate, you snatched up that ring and ran away as fast as you could?”
“Yes—that is all,” asserted Hyde. “Except that I had met a man, as I have already told you, at the end of the passage by which I entered.”
“You did not even know whether this man lying on the pavement was alive or dead?”
“I thought he might be drunk,” replied Hyde. “But after I had snatched up the ring I never thought at all until I had run some distance. I was afraid of being followed.”
“Now why were you afraid of being followed?”
“I was famishing!” answered Hyde. “I knew I could get something, some money, on that ring, in the morning, and I wanted to stick to it. I was afraid that the man whom I met as I ran out of the passage, whom I now know to have been Mr. Viner, might follow me and make me give up the ring. And the ring meant food.”
Mr. Millington-Bywater let this answer sink into the prevalent atmosphere and suddenly turned to another matter. The knife which had been found in Hyde’s possession was lying with certain other exhibits on the solicitor’s table, and Mr. Millington-Bywater pointed to it.
“Now about that knife,” he said. “It is yours? Very well—how long have you had it?”
“Three or four years,” replied Hyde, promptly. “I bought it when I was touring in the United States, at a town called Guthrie, in Oklahoma. And,” he added suddenly and with a triumphant smile as of a man who is unexpectedly able to clinch an argument, “there is a gentleman there who was with me when I bought it—Mr. Nugent Starr!”
From the magistrate on his bench to the policeman at the door every person in court turned to look at the man to whom the prisoner pointed an outstretched finger. And Mr. Pawle let out an irrepressible exclamation.
“Good God!” he said. “The claimant fellow!”
But Viner said nothing. He was staring, as everybody else was, at the man who sat by Methley. He, suddenly aware that Hyde had pointed to him, was obviously greatly taken aback and embarrassed—he looked sharply at the prisoner, knitted his brows, shook his head, and turning to Methley muttered something which no one else caught. Mr. Millington-Bywater looked at him and turned to his client.
“You say there is a gentleman here—that gentleman!—who was with you when you bought that knife?” he asked. “A friend of yours, then?”
“Well—we were playing in the same company,” asserted Hyde. “Mr. Moreby-Bannister’s company. He was heavy lead—I was juvenile. He knows me well enough. He was with me when I bought that knife in a hardware store in Guthrie.”
The magistrate’s eye was on the man who sat by Methley, and there was a certain amount of irritation in it. And suddenly Methley whispered something to his companion and the man shyly but with a noticeable composure stood up.
“I beg Your Worship’s pardon,” he said, quietly, with a polite bow to the bench, “but really, the witness is under a mistaken impression! I don’t know him, and I have never been in the town he mentions—in fact, I have never been in the United States. I am very sorry, but, really, there is some strange mistake—I—the witness is an absolute stranger to me!”
The attention of all present was transferred to Hyde. And Hyde flushed, leaned forward over the ledge of the witness-box and gave the claimant a long, steady stare.
“No mistake at all!” he suddenly exclaimed in a firm voice. “That’s Mr. Nugent Starr! I played with him for over twelve months.”
While this had been going on, Felpham on one side, and Carless on the other, had been whispering to Mr. Millington-Bywater, who listened to both with growing interest, and began to nod to each with increasing intelligence—and then, suddenly, the prosecuting counsel played unexpectedly and directly into his hand.
“If Your Worship pleases,” said the prosecuting counsel, “I should like to have the prisoner’s assertion categorically denied—it may be of importance. Perhaps this gentleman will go into the box and deny it on oath.”
Mr. Millington-Bywater sat down as quickly as if a heavy hand had forced him into his seat, and Viner saw a swift look of gratification cross his features. Close by, Mr. Pawle chuckled with joy.
“By the Lord Harry!” he whispered, “the very thing we wanted! No need to wait for the adjourned coroner’s inquest, Viner—the thing’ll come out now!”
Viner did not understand. He saw Hyde turned out of the box; he saw the claimant, after an exchange of remarks with Methley, step into it; he heard him repeat on oath the denial he had just uttered, after stating that his name was Cave, and that he lived at the Belmead Hotel, Lancaster Gate; and he saw Mr. Millington-Bywater, after exchanging a few questions and answers in whispers with
