Page:The Art of Cross-Examination.djvu/232

 allowed the witness to be brought face to face with his alleged accusers, yet he would allow no contradictions of the witness on these collateral matters. Minnock's former defiant demeanor immediately returned.

The next interrogatories put to the witness developed the fact that, feigning insanity, he had allowed himself to be taken to Bellevue with the hope of being transferred to Ward's Island, with the intention of finally being discharged as cured, and then writing sensational newspaper articles regarding what he had seen while an inmate of the public insane asylums; that in Bellevue Hospital he had been detected as a malingerer by one of the attending physicians, Dr. Fitch, and had been taken before a police magistrate where he had stated in open court that he had found everything in Bellevue "far better than he had expected to find it," and that he had "no complaint to make and nothing to criticise."

The witness's mind was then taken from the main subject by questions concerning the various conversations had with the different nurses while in the asylum, all of which conversations he denied. The interrogatories were put in such a way as to admit of a "yes" or "no" answer only. Gradually coming nearer to the point desired to be made, the following questions were asked:—

Counsel. "Did the nurse Gordon ask you why you were willing to submit to confinement as an insane patient, and did you reply that you were a newspaper man and under contract with a Sunday paper to write