He couldn't have believed Forbes-Ewing could have done it so well.
He was weaving a close web round an innocent man with consummate
forensic skill and cunning.
The case went on to its second stage. Witnesses were called, and Guy
listened to them dreamily. All of them bore out counsel's opening
statement. Every man in court felt the evidence was going very
hard against the prisoner. They'd caught the right man, that was
clear--so the spectators opined. They'd proved it to the hilt. This
fellow would swing for it.
At last the landlord of the Talbot Arms at Mambury shuffled slowly
into the witness-box. He was a heavy, dull man, and he gave evidence
as to Nevitt's stay under an assumed name--which counsel explained
suggestively by the deceased gentleman's profound love of retirement
--and as to Guy's angry remarks and evident indignation. But the
most sensational part of all his evidence was that which related
to the pocket-book Montague Nevitt was carrying at the time of his
death, containing notes, he should say, for several hundred-pounds,
"or it murt be thousands--and yet, again, it mustn't," which had
totally disappeared since the day of the murder. Diligent search
had been made for the pocket-book everywhere by the landlord and
the police, but it had vanished into space, "leaving not a wrack
behind," as junior counsel for the prosecution poetically phrased
it.
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