Page:Bailey - Call Mr Fortune (Dutton, 1921).djvu/118

Rh 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 2.5. 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