Page:The Hocussing of Cigarette.pdf/7

Rh Laverton asked Mrs. Keeson to step into the witness-box. She looked fragile and pale but otherwise quite self-possessed as she quietly kissed the book and said in a very firm tone of voice:

I can only say in reply to the extraordinary story which this man has just told that the drug in the beer must have given him peculiarly vivid dreams. At the hour he names I was in bed fast asleep, as my husband can testify; and the whole of Cockram's narrative is a fabrication from beginning to end. I may add that I am more than willing to forgive him. No doubt his brain was clouded by the opiate; and now he is beside himself owing to Alice Image's predicament. As for my son Harold, he was absent from home that night; he was spending it with some bachelor friends at the "Stag and Mantle" hotel in Newmarket.'

Yes! by the way,' said the magistrate, 'where is Mr. Harold Keeson? I have no doubt that he will be able to give a very good account of himself on that memorable night.'

My son is abroad, your worship,' said Mrs. Keeson, while a shade of a still more livid hue passed over her face.

Abroad, is he?' said the magistrate cheerfully. 'Well, that settles the point satisfactorily for him—doesn't it? When did he go?'

Last Thursday, your worship, replied Mrs. Keeson.

"Then there was silence again in the court, for that last Thursday was the day of the 'Coronation Stakes'—the day immediately following the memorable night on which the mare Cigarette had been poisoned by an unknown hand."

"I doubt whether in all the annals of criminal procedure, there ever occurred a more dramatic moment as that when so strange a ray of daylight was shed on the mysterious outrage on Cigarette. The magistrate, having dismissed Mrs. Keeson, hardly dared to look across at the trainer, who was a personal friend of his, and who had received such a cruel blow through this terrible charge against his only son—for at that moment I doubt if there were two people in that court who did not think that Mrs. Keeson had just sworn a false oath and that both she and her