Page:Fletcher - The Middle Temple Murder (Knopf, 1919).djvu/117

 Spargo turned instinctively to the door, having seen the clerk who had sat behind the Treasury Counsel make his way there. There came into view, ushered by the clerk, a smart-looking, alert, self-confident young man, evidently a Scotsman, who, on the name of David Lyell being called, stepped jauntily and readily into the place which the member of Parliament just vacated. He took the oath—Scotch fashion—with the same readiness and turned easily to the Treasury Counsel. And Spargo, glancing quickly round, saw that the court was breathless with anticipation, and that its anticipation was that the new witness was going to tell something which related to the evidence just given by Aylmore.

"Your name is David Lyell?"

"That is my name, sir."

"And you reside at 23, Cumbrae Side, Kilmarnock, Scotland?"

"I do."

"What are you, Mr. Lyell?"

"Traveller, sir, for the firm of Messrs. Stevenson, Robertson & Soutar, distillers, of Kilmarnock."

"Your duties take you, I think, over to Paris occasionally?"

"They do—once every six weeks I go to Paris."

"On the evening of June 21st last were you in London on your way to Paris?"

"I was."

"I believe you stayed at De Keyser's Hotel, at the Blackfriars end of the Embankment?"

"I did—it's handy for the continental trains."

"About half-past eleven, or a little later, that evening,